It is no doubt that the methods of selling have shifted dramatically in our digital world. The customer’s buying journey has changed and wants to talk with us much later in their journey while purchasing on a subscription/adoption model vs big bang. With all the information sources available to them on us and our competitors, they can do more research and have knowledge about our products and services before engaging with our sales teams. This puts a lot more power in the hands of the buyer and should cause us to rethink when and how we engage with them. And it changes their adoption and consumption model, affecting the timing and dependency of our revenues.
Additionally, the race to implement digital technology is speeding up the pace of change in companies and unfortunately making it easier to shift priorities. The negative effect is they do not have enough time to engage with sales teams. When they do engage, they try to control the interaction to focus on the information they think they need. Many times, this keeps us from understanding the context of why this is an issue to solve, the negative impacts on the current situation or who really cares. Additionally, there is less personal face time with more meetings conducted on Zoom, Teams, or Google meet. It certainly is a different medium than face to face and compounds the challenge to really get to know people one on one and personally. It is harder to read body language and have “water cooler” moments. Often, they are distracted from the multiple pings they are constantly getting from their social media platforms, Instagram, TikTok, or the myriads of chat channels.
Because of these challenges, we believe the job of sales teams is harder than ever, and you, the sales leaders, are challenged with helping improve productivity. However, the thing we see and worry about most is that too many sales executives are throwing multiple processes, methodologies and tools and product training at the problem with good intent but poor results.
Sales Gadgets Galore without real productivity improvement!!!
In two recent engagements doing deal reviews, we were told by the senior sales leadership that they had implemented and were actively using several important sales tools. Both companies had their version of a unique Sales Process, a CRM system, a sales methodology, a tool for org charts, opportunity planning sheets, and some AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools. Our initial reaction was that this sounded great, and we were impressed at how much they were investing in their sales teams, some $5K per year per salesperson. Unfortunately, our observations of reality showed a completely different picture. Almost no one was using all the tools. Most were complying with the CRM system as it was mandated by their leadership. None of the tools seemed to have a clear benefit to the individual salesperson and were not easy to use. Subsequently, when they were complying it was taking way too much time to complete these tools. Because they were not integrated or complementary to each other they were adding information in multiple places and frustrating the reps. But more importantly it was crowding out the critical activities of planning and practicing for sales calls and having more face time with customers.
The interesting thing for us was the huge gap in how the sales executives portrayed their sales enablement platforms and the reality of what the top producers and overwhelming majority of the sales teams relayed to us. We admit that two observations are not a statistically valid sampling and, that you and your company may be different. However, if you really want to know, get some outside observer with sales credentials to poll your sale teams to find out if you are helping or “sucking time”.
In our next post we will tell you what we think is a better way to lead sales excellence in todays digital world.
