Sales Approach – New Way Forward
New More Personal Sales Approach
While the COVID-19 started to play a bigger role in our daily life, the way companies buy from and sell to each other looks very different than it used to.
Unfortunately, no one had a chance to adapt and time to think of a new sales strategy for the coming months. Unknown, is the best word to describe our past two quarters.
To thrive in current, new normal, B2B companies will need to start and continue adapting to the new economic reality.
To understand how large this challenge is, we should take under consideration many factors, such as: Industry, current demand, spend categories, country Pandemic situation including the countries within which the company as well as its customers are based.
What’s the adaptation process?
The pivot to remote selling.
Surprisingly, this is good information to all of the sales teams, where according to Mckinsey reports 96% of B2B sales teams have fully or partially shifted to remote selling and 65% of them claim that remote model of sales is equally or even more effective than what they were doing before pandemic.
With buyers moving away from the traditional in-person engagement with their sales reps to buying online through self-serve digital channels accelerating, business leaders must ask themselves:
- How do I equip my sales teams with the tools and insight to deliver value as they engage customers?
- Do I have the ability to easily engage customers and prospects digitally how and when they want? And through what channels?
- Do I have the ability to offer channel fluidity to customers in a manner that creates a seamless compelling experience that meets their expectations?
New Approach
Today, the job of both sales and marketing combined is to engage digitally. You earn customers time by giving them what they want when they want it – insight into how to solve a problem, how to make the right choices, and how to make sense of the world around them. Salespeople must also bring experience and expertise to help buyers navigate internal processes and external challenges. You give advice to help them make good decisions.
Challenges
Most challenges sales leaders are facing now consist of pipelines and product promotion. We might think that the leads we have are just not good enough or we’re struggling with the close rates due to difficult times and frozen budgets. Is that so?
Before stating those theories, I would recommend to double check if our pipeline is really that solid and if whether the problem lies in closing rate or maybe we just haven’t completely promoted and sold our product so the getting that new customer is difficult to execute because we didn’t even get a chance to sit at the table and compete with others.
I do understand that the time is difficult for both sellers and buyers, however, as a seller please hold your emotions and try to not sound like a desperate salesperson.
With limited budgets, resources and calendar availability your potential buyers are looking for a fully dedicated personal approach, along with solutions to their challenges and personalized offers. They do NOT seek repeating sales emails with one main question: Ready to proceed, so I can issue an invoice?
Let’s be clear, It has never been more difficult for salespeople to cut through all the noise and create visibility, and it’s even more difficult now to get a prospective buyer engaged in a conversation when they are being constantly bombarded by desperate sounding salespeople.
Worse, most salespeople are not only failing to get a seat at the table, they are often getting a seat at the WRONG table.
My take
That gives us a view of B2B selling in pandemic times, and how sales teams can respond. But there is more to say. B2B sales and marketing are confronted with a massive change, beyond adjusting sales tactics.
I’m of the belief that salespeople must fully become information providers, community builders, expert advisors within industry. Please remember to be patient, supportive and persistent.
