Survival of the Fittest
Sales is a game of survival. Without sales, a company won’t stick around very long.
What are tech vendors doing to ensure their salespeople are fit enough to survive in today’s red oceans? The simple answer is: Not nearly enough.
Let’s look at some of the biggest challenges in selling in today’s tech markets.
Buyers Are Smarter
Sellers are not as prepared and enabled as the buyers of today. Buyers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their purchasing processes — and sellers are struggling to keep up. Buyers are better informed about their needs, more prepared to engage with sellers, and more adept at evaluating proposals. This has created an uneven playing field in which buyers hold more power than ever before.
Changing Expectations
Buyers operate with a lot more information than in the past. There was a time where, in B2B sales, much of the buyer’s education hinged on speaking to sellers and gathering insights and sales materials from salespersons. This practice continues in many industries, but it’s either been augmented or replaced by buyers’ own insights. Buyers can independently research and pre-qualify vendors before they ask sellers to demonstrate the value they can offer and provide clear solutions to their specific needs.
Governance and Accountability
With increased buyer expectations, solutions come with increased accountability. It’s not just about investing in products that will deliver a great return, but working with companies that share the same values, ethos, and reputation.
Team Spirit
Buying teams are growing and now include a wider range of stakeholders from across the business. This collaborative approach ensures that diverse perspectives are considered when evaluating new goods and services or renewing existing contracts. The downside is that buying decisions and the sales process are gradually becoming longer — in constrained economic times, even more so.
From Surviving to Thriving
Despite the challenges that salespersons face in today’s competitive marketplaces, it’s not all doom and gloom for those who want to move into sales or are moving into a new sales role in another industry or region. As salespeople mature in their careers, they will see that regardless of where and what they sell, there are few universal steppingstones to sales success.
Put the Human First
The goal of sales is to build relationships with customers, use past successes to build credibility, and work with the customer team to grow and entrench the partnership. Soft skills are often sought in the hiring process but wash out when the pressure mounts and becomes a numbers game. By putting the human first in sales, you can build stronger relationships with your customers and close more deals.
In today’s digital world, much is lost in daily working interactions. Digital tools have made it easier to connect buyers and sellers from all over the world — but they can also make it harder to build relationships like in the past, where much of our business practices of today were formed. In the age of AI, sellers should strive for face-to-face interactions, putting the human first.
Sellers Should be Artisans
Artisans are skilled people who excel at a particular trade or craft. The term is often used to describe those who work with their hands or in a physical environment — but it’s just as apt for what a salesperson should be.
Sales is a lot more practical than it’s made out to be. Sales teams need practical tools and skills that they can immediately apply to their accounts once they’re in the job. Tools can be anything that helps support their role and sales, such as a CRM. Skills encompasses everything from understanding how to do account plans to soft skills such as intercultural fluency, through to knowledge and understanding such as the specific regulations that are impacting the industry in which their customers operate.
Sellers will do well to realize that, when given charge of customers or accounts, it’s an opportunity to shape the future of the customer relationship, much like an artisan turns raw materials into beautiful creations.
Organizations need to provide their sales teams with better raw materials. Sales enablement is not sales training: It is a considered plan to improve performance through education and empowerment, providing sales teams with the right insights, tools, and frameworks to grow presence and success in their customer base.
The goal of sales enablement is to ensure that sales representatives have access to the right information at the right time to successfully interact with current and prospective customers and drive growth within the customer base.
Organizations should focus more on sales enablement and create a discrete function that can deliver sales resources at scale for teams. And salespersons need to be more open to adapting to new ways of doing business and working across and within technologies, industries, and markets.
How IDC Can Support Your Organization’s Sales Enablement
To capture today’s technology buyers, sales and marketing engagement strategies must be aligned. IDC’s Sales Enablement practice empowers organizations to sell more effectively and helps connect and align your marketing and sales efforts. We leverage our deep understanding of vertical, technology, and country markets to deliver programs designed around our clients’ specific enablement needs.
Connecting the Dots
IDC Sales Enablement delivers a considered plan to connect the dots linking your products and services with the right buyers.
IDC can help you:
• Educate sellers on markets, buyer personas, and business challenges
• Facilitate persuasive sales conversations with technology buyers and C-level executives
• Align digital marketing conversations with interpersonal sales conversations
Beyond Enablement
The role of sales enablement has transcended its supporting function to become an indispensable strategic driver of revenue growth. A well-structured sales enablement strategy, supported by purposeful tools, can align an organization’s sales and marketing efforts effectively, nurture customer engagement, and guide prospects through a seamless journey that culminates in higher conversions and enduring customer relationships.