Why Your Current Sales Strategy is No Longer Effective - And What You Need to Do to Fix It
If B2B buyers today make nearly 65-90% of their buying decision (researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking price) before even having a conversation with a sales representative, then exactly what is the salesperson’s role?
This is a fundamental question that every business owner and CEO should be considering as they evaluate the effectiveness of their current sales and marketing strategies and systems. If your sales are dropping and the same old sales approach isn’t generating revenue, then it’s time consider a new strategy.
Historically sales has spent a great deal of time uncovering the customers’ needs and selling them “solutions.” This was effective because even though customers often had a good understanding of what their problems were, they didn’t necessarily know how to solve them. The internet has forever changed how buyers make purchasing decisions. They now have immediate access to data and solutions that make them informed buyers.
In fact, buyers are so savvy that in many instances they have crafted detailed RFP’s that have resulted in moving the salesperson from problem solver to order taker with price being the main decision point. Because of this fundamental shift in buyer behavior, sales representatives must engage with customers earlier in the buying process, often well before the customer fully understands their own needs.
New Approach to Sales
Instead of doing battle simply on price and becoming a commodity, the sales teams today must transform into proactive educators. It’s a role focused on finding ways to provide the prospective customer with value and not pushing a product or service. In other words, companies can no longer act as the gatekeepers of information about their products and services. Instead, they must create a value-based relationship by continually providing ongoing, quality educational and helpful information that addresses the prospective customers’ pain points. With a focus on delivering the right information, in the right channel, at the right time to engage the prospect, companies must participate in content marketing.
This new approach to sales and marketing is defined by The Content Marketing Institute as, “A marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
Basically, this means that sales teams need to adjust their strategy. They can no longer afford to rely on cold calls and interruptive approaches. With the vast amount of information available to the prospective customer online, they no longer hold the keys to product solutions. In addition, sales and marketing teams must break through their silos and start working together. By doing so, they can consistently create and deliver information that makes the buyer more informed, as well as position the company as a thought leader to foster trust. This method of engagement to pull in qualified leads is used successfully by some of the largest companies in the world, including P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and John Deere.
5 Core Tactics for Developing Your New Sales Strategy
There are number tactics sales teams can use today to nurture the relationship with the potential buyer, build trust and drive them through the sales funnel. These 5 should be the foundation you build to develop the strategy.
- Buyer Personas. It is essential that marketing and sales work together to create buyer personas. These are representative groups of people who buy your products or services. With the insights gained by researching the pain points and the buying behaviors of your buyer persona, you can then identify how your product or service provides the solutions. This discovery allows you to create valuable and relevant information (content) that your buyer finds beneficial.
- Social Channels. As part of the buyer persona development, the social channels where the buyers hang out are identified. It’s important today for the sales teams to understand how to properly utilize social channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook in order to share content and connect with customers. Something as simple as recommending a new book that would be beneficial to your buyer persona fosters a value-based relationship.
- Readily Available Content. The days of having a briefcase full of collateral material is gone and has been replaced with content that is shareable across the web. Sales teams need to have a library of content in the form of video, eBooks and infographics so they can easily and quickly share information with a prospective buyer via email.
- Lead Nurturing. According to Gleanster Research, on average, 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. By implementing the practice of inbound (online or digital) marketing and utilizing a platform such as HubSpot, sales teams can automate the processes of providing continuous subtle marketing touches. This approach “drips” educational content that is not self-serving; it’s not pushing the product or service. It’s based on industry trends, best practices and minor solutions that attribute to the greater solution—your product or service. In addition, with proper analysis, the system allows the sales and marketing teams to learn what content works based on how well it assists advancing the buyer through the sales cycle.
- Knowledge. Sales and marketing teams need to expand their knowledge beyond the product or service they sell. It’s important to spend time searching the web for real-time, relevant information that they can quickly share with their prospective buyers. Being engaged with a buyer means taking a real interest in what their pain points are and delivering resources that offer solutions. Based upon the relationship and the personality of the individual buyer, sharing information specific to their individual interests such as sports or hobbies is also important to humanize the experience.
Teaching an ‘Old Sales Dog’ New Tricks
Traditionally, a top performing salesperson was equipped with certain attributes. A positive and persuasive demeanor, hunter mentality, ability to nurture leads, knack for building relationships/trust and knowledge of how the product or service solved the buyer’s problem was sufficient for closing the sale.
Due to the infinite amount of information available on the web, buyers now have more information than sellers and often have the upper hand in negotiations. Unfortunately, most companies today have been slow to adjust to the shift and the result is a dramatic decline in revenue.
Your sales people are still valuable to your company, but the time has come to teach old dogs new tricks! Instead of causing one-way interruptive selling based upon the product or service, sales today is now about delivering relevant and valuable content personalized to the buyer at the precise moment each buyer needs it. This new sales approach results in value-based relationships, shortened sales cycles and higher profitability.
