There are a number of sales experts who believe that nothing has changed in B2B buying and B2B selling. It’s odd that people who are supposed to help their clients change, fail to follow the advice they would give others. It’s like a ship captain advising passengers on how to navigate rough seas, yet refusing to update their own outdated maps. Outdated maps won’t help you now.
We are now in a time where some will profit while others perish. There will be haves and have-nots. In today’s sales world, it isn’t about what you sell, but rather how you sell. In the future, you may have problems selling what you sell because the demand for all kinds of things will likely decrease, as the Baby Boomers retire. There is no generation large enough to replace them.
The lot of salespeople who don’t believe things have changed and will change again in the future will be surprised to find out that things have already changed far beyond what they could imagine. But for now, let’s look at where we are now.
Perish: How Legacy Loses
The oldest legacy approach has now been being practiced for about 56 years. Most of the popular sales approaches are a derivative of an older approach. In most cases, changes are nothing more than a new coat of paint. The reason legacy loses is because clients don’t find that the structure of the conversation creates value for them. You can have an outstanding solution and be exceptionally adept at the older ways of selling, and you can still lose.
Research shows that buyers are unhappy with salespeople, with many buyers complaining that the sales experience isn’t helpful. When a salesperson is lucky enough to have the client sitting across from them, there should be no reason that they fail to secure a second meeting. If you cannot convert to a second meeting, consider if you wasted your client’s time by reciting information they could find on your website.
If you believe nothing has changed over the last six decades, you may have not yet heard about the internet, where every company shares much of the information a salesperson used to deliver to their prospective clients.
Profit: Making a Modern Methodology
When buyers change, salespeople who want to sell effectively must adjust to the new reality. Your clients can research your company, so they move on to a conversation that creates the value they need to pursue the better outcomes they need. This is 180 degrees from the legacy approach, and it is designed to create value in the sales conversation.
The modern methodologies pick up where the client is by helping them to acquire the information and insights that will help them through their buyer’s journey. A salesperson should provide the counsel, advice, and recommendations they need to make the decisions to transform their results.
When comparing the two dominant sales models, buyers prefer the modern approach over the legacy sales approach. This is why you can work for a large company with billions in revenue and offer an excellent solution, and still lose to a smaller company with revenue measured in the millions and a good enough-solution. The sales experience is the difference.
What’s at Stake
Many sales organizations believe that because something worked in the past, it will always work. When something worked for you in the past, there is no guarantee that it will work in the future. Because we live in a time with the fastest rate of change ever recorded, you and I will see more change than people experienced in the past.
If you ask a sales leader if their client’s industries have changed over time, your sales leader will answer in the affirmative. But when confronted with the same question, asked of their own industry, they often answer negatively. They believe that what they are doing is good enough, even though every key performance indicator is flashing a red light.
When you lose a contest to a competitor, you may have lost the client’s business for many years. You can be locked out far longer than you might imagine. It is important that you win these deals if you want to succeed in reaching your goals.
Sales Effectiveness
Every sales organization and sales leader should have only one initiative: ensuring the effectiveness of each member of their sales team. If you want to understand the effectiveness, you need to look no farther than your win rates. This single KPI tells you the whole story about the effectiveness of your sales approach.
It is more difficult to focus on sales effectiveness than it is to add new software to your sales tech stack, that bloated, time-consuming expense that does not do one thing to help a salesperson sell better. But what is more difficult than improving your sales approach is failing to reach your sales goals.
Profit or Perish
There are always winners and losers, but most of the time, you can’t argue you should have won a deal when a client decides to buy from your competitor. Reason one is that you didn’t create enough for your client and they decided they value your sales approach. When all you have at your disposal is a conversation, you should prioritize it, if you want to win deals.
To avoid perishing, you will need to adopt an approach that gives your buyers the experience they need and prefer. Without addressing a client’s needs, you risk perishing. Deals are too precious to do otherwise. If you are an individual, you should work on your sales effectiveness. If you are a sales leader, this is what you should worry most about when it comes to your sales team.
Those who stand to profit are the salespeople that are already practicing a modern sales methodology. It’s not too late to make the changes that improve sales results and move you closer to your goals and targets. Leaving this article, assess your approach, and make adjustments that will ensure you will profit while others perish.
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