Sales Insights For The Years Ahead These sales insights for the years ahead to 2025 and even beyond will probably shape how sales organizations go about selling. Old sales strategies and sales tactics playbooks will be torn up as rapid innovation is changing how buyers buy. Technology and social media is opening up new ways of accessing information while disruption has engulfed nearly every salesperson. Unfortunately, many organizations have been slow to respond, preferring to rely on traditional sales strategies. One of the critical sales insights to accept is that B2B buyers are now being influenced in their buying behavior by their own experience as a consumer. Business challenges are often more about change management as the buying group can be inundated with choices and data. Plus, most decisions now have to consider the other business departments and stakeholders. These considerations are shaping the buyers journey alongside how they buy. The B2B buyer no longer just wants to buy products or solutions, they expect a buying experience that will generate value for them across all touch points and interactions. Sales leaders and salespeople everywhere will need to adopt a digital sales mindset to meet these new buying preferences and succeed at selling. Accepting that digital interactions between buyers and sellers will reshape most traditional sales models. Companies that will succeed to this new reality will sell to their buyers everywhere they expect to find them, engage with them, and interact with them. Top sales insights for the years ahead The buyer to seller relationship has changed forever. 2020 will go down in history as the year that drastically changed the way all of us, business and consumers buy. Bricks and mortar retailing will most likely never recover the footfall they once enjoyed. In the B2B world, buying decisions and habits are being transformed as companies adjust to remote purchasing and using digital to acquire knowledge. Sales leaders and salespeople will realize that many buyers will retain these new buying habits moving forward, so sellers need to focus on a digital mindset. Sales negotiations will be more impersonal. In the past, sales negotiations were in large, conducted person to person in a physical setting. Moving forward, the buying group will use more comparable data and use remote tools such as email and video to assemble final pricing without the final sales pitch. There will be less emotion in the buyers journey. Also, there will be less opportunities to deliver the sales experience and even fewer to negotiate the final sale. Companies need to understand how to influence buyers more during the earlier stages in the sales process and deliver more rewarding sales experiences without relying on final negotiation tactics. The emergence of digital interaction centers. More sales insights to consider will be the need to offer competitive products wrapped up in the right sales experience. Companies will need to build systems that facilitate automated and personalized interactions between for the buyer plus digital scalability for the sales organization including artificial intelligence. Sales teams will need to be reconfigured to optimize, transform, and innovate the sales process to deliver more enriched experiences. Make no doubt about it, this is a permanent transformation of any businesses sales strategy, processes and sales resources. Welcome to the age of buyer-centric selling and digital first sales engagement with buyers. The sales process will be buyer centric. Following on from the above sales insight, sales leaders that embrace buyer centric selling will focus on belief in the customer first, interactive buyer lead sales conversations, and genuine collaborative solutions. The buying journey is far from linear which means that sales organizations will recognize that any point along the buying journey, the buyer may decide to move forwards, step back, circle around or just abandon the journey altogether. Sales milestones, reviews and KPI’s will need to catch up. Buyer centric, consultative selling organizations who live to solve problems for their buyers will survive and thrive, the rest will struggle. The sales experience and artificial intelligence will determine success. We know that technology that enables a better sales experience is evolving fast. Add in the real fact that buyers now spend as little as 17% of their buying journey engaging with potential suppliers when considering a purchasing process. The challenges facing companies to how to counterbalance less customer face time with an improved sales experience and a more rewarding interaction for the buyer. AI and other sales enabling technologies will allow the salespeople to focus their time on the customers who expect it and want it. Sales leaders in conjunction with customer feedback must prioritize where AI connected selling should be utilized for both improved sales success and to reduce the not needed interaction requirements by the buyer. Research into sales insights is showing that artificial intelligence will start to eliminate salesperson guessing in the sales process including mapping exactly where the customer is on their journey and suggest the correct sales tactics. The advent of “growth enablement”. The new business normal will force organizations to rethink their go to market sales and marketing tactics including recruitment, sales training, coaching, and empowering the entire customer focused teams. Sales, marketing, and customer service will blend in together to form a holistic growth enablement strategy. Sales management will drive growth enablement as a strategy to improve sales effectiveness, support customer acquisition and development and to grow strategic accounts, all of which hinge on helping buyers to make buying easier. Growth enablement at its heart is to help buyers navigate the cluttered world of B2B digital purchasing. It is the leaderships team to ensure that growth enablement is delivered to improve the sales experience to all customers across a multi-channel selling environment. No more silo departments. To support growth enablement, leaders will dismantle the standard organizational structure of multiple separate teams. Sales, marketing, and any department that touches a customer will be integrated into a “buyer experience” unit. The days of internal teams with their own processes and goals will come to anSales Insights For The Years Ahead
The Future B2B Sales Strategy The future B2B sales strategy will have to account for both the harsh business and economic challenges that will prevail for probably a good five years. Sales leaders looking to balance their immediate goals with long term opportunities will need to plan for the four N’s. The Now, the Next and the Never Normal. No business can plan to go back to the old way of doing things. The winners will aggressively adapt a sales strategy that finds new ways of operating. The Now phase is the immediate focus on workforce, customers, and suppliers. The Next phase will involve refocusing the sales strategy to cope with new threats and develop new opportunities. And the Never Normal phase will require planning for shifts in values, preferences, work behaviors and audiences. Today is that time to develop a plan for business transformation with new approaches to management, workforce deployment, customer engagement and leadership. Every B2B sales strategy must now be able to answer these questions: NOW. How does my business stay ahead of constantly changing customer needs? How do we enable virtual selling that drives sales? How to keep a remote salesforce engaged and productive? NEXT. How can we stand out from the competition in the digital era? How to blend virtual and traditional sales approaches? How do we tap into customer demand preferences? How do we enable a sales culture to focus on value? What new sales strategies can be leveraged? Which tools and systems will we need to use? To help shape your thinking, a recent survey from Bain showed that 70% of B2B buyers felt that virtual sales calls are just as effective as in-person calls even those involving a high degree of customization or configuration. This means that B2B buyer priorities are changing completely. The onus will be on sales leaders to deliver on innovative ways of tapping into and understanding customers’ needs for The Now and The Next phases, maybe even The Never Normal again phase. The future B2B sales strategy will focus on turning customer needs into value lead solutions because meaningful customer connections and conversations will rule. The Future B2B Sales Strategy will include: Communication. The ability to target the right customer with the right message, keeping communication timely, relevant, and customized to each customer’s unique needs. Message Consistency. Delivering consistent sales or business messages and content across all channels and partners including social media, digital, web, forums and via salespeople. For buyers to get unified messaging, the marketing, sales and service platforms will be a single source of truth for all campaigns, content, social messaging, whitepapers, research and product information. The Arm Breaker Strategy. The purchasing power of large organizations (the arm breakers) will mean that salespeople need to be equipped with the right skills to engage the most important prospects and develop the existing large customer base. Target Wisely. Reduce leakage and sales costs while improving margins by getting salespeople to focus only on the “worthwhile” customers to boost productivity, conversion rates and value captured. Other customers will be serviced via the web, AI, and digital tools such as chat. Enable virtual assistants to improve interactions and to handle customer inquiries for sales etc Virtual Selling. Future thinking sales leaders are focused on boosting the effectiveness of their virtual sales teams. They are redefining the sales and buyers journey, streamlining their sales tactics, making buying easier and bringing visibility to all customer interactions. The future B2B sales strategy for digital requires keeping it simple for both buyer and seller, the complete digital experience from ease of navigation to buying. Drive The Win Deal Ratio. Aligned to targeting wisely, driving up the win deal ratio will require helping salespeople with win strategies to position the products or services to reflect new needs and customer priorities. Sales quotas will be fluid and adjustable in response to downturns or upswings. All sales goals will be motivational, motivate growth, targeted to retain the salespeople, and align with the company’s overall performance. Train, Train, and Train. Sales enablement, sales coaching and sales training will need to show the sales force on how to thrive in digital selling and virtual sales negotiation methods. Align incentives and adjust pricing policies to encourage the sales team to focus on the high value customer segments and margin rich offerings. Develop sales play books to help salespeople on how to accelerate their sales results. Real Time Signals. Invest in the technology and tools to monitor changes in customer demands across relevant geographies and regions. Deploy predictive AI tools to achieve optimal customer targeting and uncover new propensity-to-buy signals in real time. Create Digital Interaction Deals. Create or repackage deals to attract digital interaction including remote buying, work-from-home solutions and offerings that are reflective of the remote buyer. For new digital acquisition sales tactics, companies will repurpose existing products and services to meet and exceed unfulfilled these customer needs. Negotiation Hit Team. Sales agility will become a central cog, sales leaders will set up command centers made up of sellers, negotiators, finance, and product specialists that are empowered to negotiate deal terms and compromise requests. The business will already understand the customers’ financial position, have preapproved commercial terms and tools to mitigate any profit/margin risk. Positioning and Value Propositions. The future B2B sales strategy “Next Phase” of business will account for how customers’ needs have changed. In response, sales management must adapt how they position the value of their products and services plus re-evaluate the value propositions for each target segment. Where to Play. To support sales agility, the sales strategy will need to decide what resources to give to which segments or territories. The business will have to separate out stable markets, how to capitalize on temporary spikes, identify and resource early emerging markets and investing in areas with long-term demand growth. Summary The B2B Sales Strategy in the Future The next number of years will see incredible transitions. Sales leaders can start to look forward to shapingThe Future B2B Sales Strategy
This list of sales statistics to boost selling results can also be used to shape your sales strategy implementation. Sales statistics and data are factors now important in defining any selling activity or investment from social selling to inbound sales. Sales statistics are also critical for sales channel selection and how to drive deeper customer engagement. GENERAL SALES STATISTICS Selling today is now more complex as there are an average of 7 decision-makers involved in the B2B buying process. Nearly two thirds of B2B buyers state that prior to completing any purchase they researched at least two but as many as seven B2B sites plus between 50 and 90% of the buyer’s journey is complete before they interact with a salesperson. A B2B buyer experience survey recently reported that B2B buyer’s believer that the purchasing process is more tedious due to more detailed ROI analysis (77%), more extensive research activity (75%), and increased buying group members (52%). While, 77% of B2B purchasers said that they would not even speak to a salesperson until they had done their own research. Add in the fact that the average B2B buyer uses six different channels to engage with potential vendors along their journey purchase. Then a recent Wharton survey found that 65% of buyers surveyed had experienced a level of frustration interacting with vendors along their journey. The impact of the internet and social media of both B2B and B2C sales cannot be underestimated. Online sales in both B2B and B2C have not only expanded the reach and volume of traditional sales methods but have also changed entire sales models across numerous industries. The potential of online channels has enabled small and medium enterprises to take a more global approach to their sales strategy. As soon as 2024, over 3.0 billion people worldwide are expected to buy goods and services online, up from 1.7 billion online buyers in 2016. In fact, in 2016, 58.3 percent of global internet users had purchased products online while this figure is expected to grow to near on 70 percent by 2025 – McKinsey. When it comes to the impact of the internet of B2B sales, in the US B2B online sales will hit $1.8 trillion and account for approx. 17% of all B2B sales in the US by 2023. Gartner is forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 10% for B2B eCommerce over the next five years. Today, just north of 49 percent of total B2B sales are still conducted by salespeople in person. While some types of customers and the more complex sales will still be best suited to this channel, expect to see a decline in SaaS and Transaction type sales involving salespeople especially where they don’t add value. To prove this point, 52% of B2B buyers view self-service features as the most important factor when assessing a vendor’s overall sales experience. According to Adobe, nearly 50% of high-tech B2B sales are expected to come from digital channels over the next 3 years. A recent survey from Accenture showed that nearly 73% of B2B senior executives stated that the expectation for more personalized experiences when interacting with brands or salespeople is high on their agenda. While other important factors that influence B2B buyers are value-added services (31%), product features (19%), product reliability (18%), price (17%), and sales experience (15%). In larger, some complex sales, 91% of C-level executives expect their business partners to play a more significant role in their operations. For customer acquisition, the top selling points to get B2B customers to consider change are 1. vendor reputation at 53%, 2. price at 47%, 3. existing customer loyalty/references at 43%, and 4. help with making buying easier (38%). It is hard to believe that in less than 50 years the B2B software market has grown from nearly zero into a multi-billion-dollar industry. According to Statista the B2B software market is expected to grow to over $800 billion by 2025. This category includes business productivity software, business software, and security software. SALES STATISTICS AND BUYERS They may not be your target customer right now, but Gen Z is the future. Gen Z are categorized as those who were born after 1998 and they already command $44 billion in buying power. In fact, by 2020 it is forecasted that will account for approx. 40 percent of all consumer shopping. Gen Z will also be a large portion of the B2B buying group within the next 10 years. They are digital natives who have grown up with the internet, social media and mobile technology. Then we come to Millennials. These are people who were born from the 1980’s to the mid 90’s. A recent Gartner research study into B2B buyer profiles found that over 45% of the 430 B2B technology buyers surveyed were millennials, plus 73% of millennials who work in business are involved in the technology purchasing process for their companies. This is the biggest of any age group involved with the purchase of B2B products and services. Social media is a major influence on product discovery and purchasing decisions for millennials, with 40 percent of them ranking social sources (social media, family, friends) in their top three channels for ideas on products to buy. A survey from CSO Insights found that in the modern sales process 79 percent of buyers feel it is important for salespeople to act as trusted advisers. However, a report from Forrester reports that 62% of B2B buyers say they can now develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list based solely on digital content. This begs the questions – What is the role of salespeople moving forward? Boston consulting group believe that 70% of B2B search queries will be happening on mobile devices within the next 2 years. So, a sales strategy that includes an “online sales channel” will remain a priority for most B2B companies who compete online lead generation or sales. Another survey by Gartner found that sales teams with a high year on year revenue growth sharedSALES STATISTICS TO BOOST SELLING RESULTS
What does the future hold for the inside sales jobs role for a salesperson and will its job description come to mean anything more than facilitating a customer’s purchase. The future of sales is not an Outside V Inside salesperson argument but a Salesperson V Technology one, because even today technology is now facilitating greater numbers of sales conversations (up to sale completion). What will the inside sales jobs role look like in three-to-five years? The inside sales role will evolve in line with technology. These roles will evolve to become way more value add using sales tools, AI and technology. However, most inside sales jobs will decline or even be eliminated altogether as technology replaces many customer interactions. Many experts believe that within five years, the inside sales jobs role will be completely determined by artificial intelligence. The use of data for trends, insights and sales activity with CRM will be outputted by AI, as it has the ability to process far greater amounts of data much faster and more efficiently than human interrogation. The impact to inside sales jobs will mean only the effective “consultant” type roles will survive and thrive. All other inside sales jobs will most likely be replaced by technology. The “sales consultants” will be deemed the high-value sales talent to be deployed to earlier stages of the sales to maximize results. This will lead to the remaining sales jobs demanding deeper sales skills, so relevant sales training and sales courses around conversations, commitments and navigating a more complex buyers’ journey effectively will be critical. The inside sales jobs role in the future will most likely require more and more specialization. Expecting an inside salesperson to excel at research, prospecting, outreach, discovery, evaluation, presentations, negotiations and then closing is a falsehood. The entire sales process and the buyer’s journey will be mapped into a number of key stages. Then, depending on what is being sold, will see individual salespeople focusing on each stage. Sales prospecting roles and marketing will produce a mix of inbound and outbound sales leads, Sales researchers will use AI to map out account plans, conduct research and other pre-sale activities. Sales consultants will undertake the actual conversations, discovery work, connecting internally, presentations and closing the deals. Customer managers (who may not be part of the sales team) will implement what’s been sold and provide customer service. Inside sales jobs role will quickly evolve from being an individual producer with their own goals, leads and CRM contacts to being part of the specialized team, who will share data, trends and insights via the use of sales automation tools to stay connected to prospects and customers. We will see a bigger focus on Account Based Management from the sales leadership team. In fact, the sales functions and reward models will look much more like a unified team of sales, marketing, and customer service pointing in the same direction, using the same sales tools plus following a common sales playbook. Situational Awareness to become a key cog in every sales strategy and inside sales jobs role. Its importance is as a result of companies striving to learn how to shorten their sales cycles or better understand why buyers exit the sales process without deciding (as much as 90% of the time). Specialization will lead to better uncovering of information around buyer readiness, engagement rules, internal conflicts and buyer change management preparation so deals can progress at improved velocity. Situational awareness to become even more central to the sales process as buying committees grow, deals get more complex (may be nothing to do with price but more internal issues). The challenge for salespeople is to acquire situational awareness via ongoing sales training so it occurs throughout the entire sales process. Inside Sales Jobs Role on the Decline As mentioned earlier, certain inside sales jobs are already in decline and this will accelerate quickly over the next few years. The inside sales jobs role that will disappear include, The Order takers – These types of roles whose primary function is to serve a customer and help transact a sale will decline the fastest, by as much as 40%. The Explainers – These inside sales jobs role whose function is pointing out options, explaining product differences or doing online demonstrations are the next on the list to decline rapidly as technology and AI solutions kick in. The Sales Navigators – These sales roles will decline slower, as they will be part of the buyer stages to guide buyers through the purchasing process. These roles will mainly be deployed in the mid stages of the sales process where personalization and complexity of choice needs addressing. Inside Sales Jobs Role that will Thrive The Sales Consultants. These roles will thrive as buyers seek to be enlightened, educated, challenged and empowered. The sales consultants will enter the sales process in the early stages where AI and technology has indicated the need for a higher skilled human sales resource. They will be skilled at sales prospecting, social selling, starting conversations, developing relationships, proposing a more strategic approach and gaining commitments not just from the buyer but the whole buying committee. Sales consultants will master that messaging and content gets driven by the account (and the opportunities) rather than the individual needs. The Future of the Inside Sales Jobs Role Sales, selling and how buyers buy is in uncharted territory. Technology disruption, digital sales transformation, lower the cost of sales and adjusting the sales and marketing efforts to the buyer’s journey is posing challenges. First, inside sales jobs will be impacted by the automating of order fulfillment, self-service, on-demand virtual product tours and administrative type sales tasks. The use of chat-bots and digital assistants to transact high-volume, simplified transactions will see sales management recruit salespeople to focus on higher-value or more strategic type sales. Through this approach, some inside sales jobs will thrive and grow, while others will gradually be removed fromInside Sales Jobs Role
What is selling and the definition of selling is a question is a valid question often asked by newer people to the profession. Selling involves many different activities and actions which depend on the customers situation and where in the sales journey you are at. Selling to a new prospect has a different definition to reengaging or up-selling to an existing customer. So, there is no real one size fits all definition to what selling means especially as buyers now control the whole process. How would you define selling? As we see it, in general the term “selling” can be fined as the exchange of value, the process where a buyer sees the value in paying a company or a seller an agreed price for a product or service that they want delivered. All selling starts via a “sales process”. Think of the sales process as a journey towards an end point taken over a time period. The sales process can be triggered by either the buyer or seller. For example, a buyer could phone or email into a company requesting further information on a product, or a seller could make a cold call to a buyer where the buyer expresses an interest to learn more. Both of these scenarios trigger the sales process and by default the activity of selling begins. Regardless of who triggered the sales process, the selling activity is made up of two core activities – Conversations and Commitments. During the sales process, the seller will engage the buyer in a series of planned conversations to convince the buyer that their solution will solve a need or issue that the buyer has. It also entails the seller getting the buyer to make a series of commitments during each conversation to ensure that the sales process is making progress towards a final decision. At the end of the sales process, if the buyer makes a commitment to purchase, they will agree a price and other terms in exchange for the seller delivering the product or service. When we talk about “what is selling definition”, it is important to understand the psychology of selling. We don’t sell products or solutions, we sell stories, ideas, commitments, results, satisfaction, relief, trust, confidence, assurance etc As mentioned earlier, selling involves many different activities, these sales or selling skills will include cold calling, cold email outreach, social selling, sales prospecting, handling inbound calls, business development, nurturing relationships, overcoming objections, dealing with multiple contacts within an organization, engaging customers, suggesting ideas, presenting plans and solutions, negotiating pricing and closing deals. It also includes skills such as business knowledge of the product, markets, trends and business challenges. It takes this and more for a seller to enact the exchange of value between a buyer and themselves. So, let us take the definition of selling a little further. Selling to customers or indeed anyone is composed of the following. A Sales strategy; this is a plan on how the seller is going to find buyers, or how buyers will find the seller. Will you sell direct to buyers or sell via someone else. In a nutshell, it outlines exactly how the seller or company plans to get their products and services in front of customers. A sales model; the sales model is determined by the product or service being sold, for example, a low-cost everyday product would be sold via a transactional sales model where the seller attempts to secure the sale on one call or over a very short time period. More complex, higher value products will have a consultative sales model where several conversations will be had over a longer period of time. A Sales process; this is the journey the seller wants the buyer to undertake on their way to deciding to purchase. The sales process is a series of stages or steps that could include item such as free trial undertaken, presentation to the buyer, face to face meeting, Sales tactics; these are the selling skills the seller will deploy to convince the buyer that what they are proposing is the right choice. Sales tactics include building up trust with the buyer, having credibility, using existing customer references, reports, studies, getting introduced by a mutual contact, free assessments etc. So, in selling, a customer-focused solution should be the end result of your efforts in the process. The role of you the salesperson is to be effective, so your sales activity facilitates the decision making for the customer. To do this, you must be able to; Open meaningful conversations with a customer. Understand the business issues of the customer. Help customers to understand these issues. Build an effective solution. Link the proposed solution to the issues. What is selling going to mean in the future Selling expectations and activities that once dominated the thinking in the world of sales strategy has evolved significantly thanks to the digital era. Today, any serious buyer can get access to detailed information about most products including the companies that sell them. They can read reviews, compare features, get pricing and narrow down potential vendors without engaging with a salesperson. So, what is selling going to mean for a salesperson into the future?. Check out some free sales training. or Online Sales Training Videos. Future selling skills will require any salesperson to have acquired the ability to research and understand a buyer’s needs (that includes the ability to uncover issues the buyer may not yet recognize), provide really useful insights into the buyer’s industry and knowledgeable on future market trends. Selling will mean that sellers and buyers will have to collaborate deeper if they are to have purposeful conversations and achieve higher levels of commitment. Selling will require salespeople to be able to convey real business value, not through some sales pitch but through relevant business impact. What is selling and the definition of selling is unique to every seller and organization. In fact, the definition of selling should be personal as it defines notWhat is Selling – Definition
Future of B2B Sales B2B sales and the impact of social media, data, connectivity, and technology are bringing a step change in how companies sell. These changes will help companies take a giant step that will take them way beyond all the traditional selling tactics. B2B sales are about to evolve like never before by embracing the advantages digital technology provides. In fact, leading companies are already pulling away from their peers in both sales growth and sales productivity improvement. There is no doubting that B2B buyers have moved the selling goalposts as they seek out information and content on products using the internet and social media. This has led to a rise in challenges for sales leadership, challenges such as: Re-evaluating their products and services to meet buyers changing habits Combating new entrants, alternative business models, and pricing pressure The acceleration of commoditization and substitution due to buyer education Far greater transparency and increase in buyer purchasing knowledge The shift in seller-buyer control in favor of the buyer The reality is that dealing with these challenges in B2B sales is here and now, but also that they will become more magnified in the near future. If we add in the buyer’s preference for subscription-based models then the challenges listed above become even more pronounced, leading sales leadership to rethink how they go to market and engage with customers. The Future Focus in B2B sales Research into B2B sales practices being deployed by leading companies have found that they focus on 3 core strategies. Strategy 1: Making the buying process easier. This applies as much to the more complex sales as it does to selling commodity type products. Leading sales organizations are focused on making their product offerings, sales touch points, access to information and internal systems as easy as possible for customers and prospects. Acknowledging the change not just in buyer’s preferences but also buyer profiles (millennials are becoming the largest demographic in B2B buying), the sales interactions need to be more rewarding, informative and fulfilling. Sales leaders are seeking out a sales strategy and methods to maximize sales touch points to improve the value buyers receive by make the sales process: Transparency. Buyers are demanding a more open approach to purchasing, so companies will utilize new sales tools, new systems and processes to deliver a far greater transparent sales experience for their customers. The added bonus for the sales organization is this change can result in a more leaner and more flexible sales force. Multi-Channel Unified Experience. B2B sales offerings will closer resemble the B2C sales experience. This entails the provision of 24/7 access to specs, pricing, information, ordering etc through all channels, but mostly digital or social media. It’s about connecting all the company’s channels to ensure a transparent experience across the different sales touch points. Highly personalized interactions. Again, as with B2C selling, the concept of “my B2B sales preferences” is on the rise. Transparency and the multi-channel experience will lead to increased buyer trust, leading to more data becoming available. This data and information will give companies the ability to anticipate and adapt to B2B customer needs. At a practical level it will allow customers to receive customized and highly relevant interactions where they are presented with personalized value propositions aligned to their specific challenges. Tools that let customers self-configure a customized product solution, quotation and a virtual implementation will grow in deployment. Strategy 2: Focus on longer term customer value. It’s no longer the seller V the buyer. Companies will focus on really understanding the “what, why, and when” of the customer needs. Buyers will be invited to participate in the ecosystem that serves them so they can self-generate their own value. Selling will become more collaborative and sales people will create more real sales opportunities by allowing buyers to bundle and unbundle products or solution themselves, based on their needs. Adding Value. Companies will broaden out their offerings to include a more complete customer solution (maybe via partners) that lowers the overall cost of product acquisition, to make it easier to implement or to improve business results. The divide between products and solutions that a business offers to customers will be fluid depending on customer preferences. Selling becomes more intelligent. Sales people will use the multi-channel approach to become a trusted advisor to a core group of buyers. B2B sales organizations will invest in up-skilling the sales teams to educate their customers on needs they did not know they even had. Apart from nurturing and educating the customer, the salesperson will engage the different stakeholders and decision makers within the buyer’s organization to discover and highlight the need. They will make buying easier. Strategy 3: Using Data and Analytics to create customer value. The use of data and analytics will help many organizations to reframe how it defines customer value. These tools and insights will uncover greater opportunities to expand the value delivered to customers. The future of B2B sales will to go beyond the traditional role of customer interactions, they will create value for the customer via: Science in Sales. Data, analytics and the resulting insights will make it easier to offer the customer products and services that matches their actual assessed needs. B2B sales organizations will use deep customer and market intelligence to create value beyond what customers are able to self-educate on themselves via channels such as social media. AI and the Virtual Experience. Engaging customers will evolve to include the use of sales tools such as AI, a virtual experience or simulated environment that will allow customers to truly absorb the potential value of a companies offering. Sales and the social business. Companies will embrace the concept of a social business, using not just sales but other functions to reach and connect with a larger number of buyers. Social media, social selling and digital connectivity makes it increasingly easier to engage with a larger grouping of B2B buyersFuture of B2B Sales
Mapping out the sales process steps is secondary to knowing what a sales process is, when it comes to acquiring, developing and maintaining customers. In the digitally influenced sales process, the goal is no longer so focused so much on giving pitches and pricing, but to offer value propositions personalized to each client. The modern sales process is void of any unnecessary complexity or obstacles in customer interaction. The term “sales process” usually refers to the series of steps a business has mapped out that gives it the best possible outcome to generate revenue with both new and existing customers. It could form part of the bigger sales playbook. It is different from company to company depending on their industry and complexity or pricing of the product. In a practical level, the sales process steps act as a prescriptive guide for salespeople to follow when engaging in sales prospecting, business development, retaining customers and closing deals. Sales Process Steps. Research shows that the more formal the sales processes steps, the stronger the sales performance. This is because closing a sale is becoming ever more difficult. Buyers have access to numerous sources of information and can be highly educated when they first come into contact with a salesperson. So, a sales process must plan to intervene with customers further and further upstream in their buyer’s journey. A modern sales process should be: Customer focused Clearly outlined Prescriptive in nature Aligned to buyer’s journey Outcome oriented Measurable against KPI’s Adaptable across channels Many articles on “what is a sales process” will have the sales process steps starting at Prospecting. However, we see prospecting within the “sales section”, which is the 3rd section of a sales process, with Knowledge and Research being the 1st and 2nd sections respectively. So, our sales process steps have 3 sections, each section has a series of steps that build to the complete sales process. They are 1. Knowledge Management, 2. Research and 3. Sales. Knowledge Management Knowledgeable management in the sales process steps is about ensuring all salespeople have a thorough understanding of what they are selling and to whom. It includes the sales team being prepared to give in-depth answers to any customer questions, knowledge about their business and industry, sales trends, competition analysis, market trends, how the company’s products solve problems, and where to find resources, information or assets they will use during the sales process. The knowledge management section in the sales process should also track which questions the sales teams ask the most, what assets and content do they access the most often, and which types of sales touch points or activities that produce the best results. The inclusion of different customer engagement scenarios, real case studies on how buyers pain points were solved, sales cycle obstacles, how deals were won and how new revenue was generated is also a valuable part of knowledge management. Research Market and sales research, that is having salespeople trained on the target market, ideal customer profiles, target customers, the industry, and the business’s value proposition to the market can never be overstated. Developing a deep understanding of customer profiles., their buying journey and knowing how to acquire sales intelligence is now a key aspect of a sales process. It also includes research on competitors, the core issues buyers usually experience as it relates to the product, and then combine these with market knowledge to understand the key points to address these issues. Creating a list of “research points” that salespeople must have prior to engaging a prospect or upselling an existing customer should be given strong consideration in the sales process steps. Sales 58% of companies don’t have a tailored approach to the different moments in the buyer’s journey. Now we come to the 3rd section of the sales process. This is the act and activity of engaging with prospects or customers to sell. The challenge for every business is to equip every salesperson with the ability to consistently and systematically have valuable conversations either online or offline with the right set of customers at each stage of the buyer’s journey to optimize the results of the sales process steps. The guiding principle in any sales process has to be concerned with maximizing selling time, customer acquisition and relationship building. It needs to be stated that aligning the sales effort with sales process takes work. Sales leaders sometime have to overcome the fear that disrupting the current process will impact revenue. All stakeholders from sales, marketing, support and finance will need to work together to prioritize the expected steps in the sales process. This is about visioning the future, seeing the bigger picture, and focusing on the best sales process steps to boost the time spent selling regardless of past practices. While the “Sales Section” is the implantation aspect of the sales process, the inclusion of Knowledge Management and Research ensure a more holistic approach to customer engagement. Next, we can take a look at the sales process steps within the sales section. TYPICAL SALES PROCESS STEPS Sales Prospecting This step involves finding and engaging a new set of potential customers using market knowledge and research. Using this information, the salespeople will use a multi-channel approach including social selling, cold calling, cold emails and social networking to engage the prospect. The days of sales Prospecting being a smash and grab event are long gone, it may take weeks or months to build up enough influence with a buyer before a sales conversation can happen. The sales process steps should outline in detail the methodical approach the company wants to undertake for the sales prospecting step in the process. Nurturing and Collaboration. This step involves the salesperson nurturing and collaborating with a set of prospects (or existing customers) to understand their business, uncovering needs, gathering information, identifying the buying committee and vitally to ascertain if a need really exists. If aSales Process Steps