If you have been in B2B sales for a while, you probably realized that the profession of sales has dramatically changed. The approaches that worked well in the past, no longer work today. Your past winning methods become a liability. Historically, salespeople acted as an information conduit. Their role was to inform, educate and train buyers; it was a straightforward sales process. It was all about, here is my products, features, advantages, and benefits, here is the monetized value you will gain from acquiring this product. This methodology worked for a long while. Then, it stopped working. The question is why?

The internet and Google were the culprits. Now the customer had access to the same information the salespeople relied on to establish report and act as they know-it-all sales professionals. This cataclysmic change provided the buyer with the ultimate competitive power as he controls the buying decision and the budget. The sales cycle shifted to allowing the salesperson intervention only at a much later part of the sales process. Social media and search media had enabled buyers’ access to peer shared unique information and trade education. Allowing buyers’ to diagnose their issues, self-educate on potential resolutions and do a comparative analysis by shopping privately online without having to interact with a single salesperson.

Times have changed

Deprived of their information competitive advantage, many salespeople felt lost. The only way to compete was to submit to buyer’s requests by a depressing margin to win the deal at any cost. Google search has assumed much of salespeople traditional selling power. To stay relevant, salespeople needed to provide a unique perspective to create the Aha moment or deliver individual information that is only privy to the company or the industry specialists. Buyers were just interested in information, facts and perspectives they couldn’t access or were incredibly complicated.

The internet and globalization have changed the way salespeople sell and the way they interact with buyers. The latter landscape has adjusted based on the flow and diffusion of information. Several studies have revealed that most buyers prefer e-commerce platforms to identify and acquire products without any human interaction. However, the complexity of some products and services forces buyers to interact with a salesperson to simplify and speed the process. Here are few instances where buyers may be willing to accept help from a sales professional.

  • Complex product/service that requires long-term maintenance.
  • Product/ service where the information is hard to acquire.
  • Misalignment of decision makers, requiring a sales professional to act as a mediator to facilitate decision making.
  • Complex internal integration/implementation is requiring a group of professionals to ensure seamless launch.
  • Fear of making a mistake that can threaten one job.

Buyers wanted complete assurance that the product purchased is right from every perspective. Hence, the necessity to interact with a trusted sales professional. Salespeople holding a personal brand that is known for high integrity, expertise and professionalism will enjoy faster conversion, more word-of-mouth buyers’ referrals, and more elevated close rate.

Salespeople that were not able to adapt and evolve fast enough risk becoming a casualty of stagnation.

Nowadays, buyers are demanding, and they are overseeing their investments. It’s getting harder to engage them, unless, you have an already established report and have a compelling value proposition, and there is a need for your products.

The competition is fierce, and the market is inundated with a multitude of options and substitute solutions. Margins are eroding, pressure on the sales reps is mounting. Many sales organizations are shrinking their salesforce and replacing them with a telesales, e-commerce websites, and temporary contractors.

“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” ~Zig Ziglar

B2B sales is getting harder

It’s hard to be a B2B field salesperson today. Companies are looking for ways to cut cost, so they terminate half of the sales force, then double everyone’s quota. Talking about pressure!

To make things worse, buyer prefer not to deal with any salespeople at all. If they have to, then they prefer someone who accepts their terms. With challenging sales quotas, salespeople have no alternative but to push products at a higher velocity and lower margin to remain relevant, competitive and stay employed.

Will Technology replace the B2B salesperson?

It seems to be the future aspiration of many large sales organization. Jack Ma, the founder of the Alibaba Group, stated that the following “In 30 years a robot will likely be on Time magazine as the best CEO.” McKinsey Global Institute reported the that 25% of CEOs’ time is spent on activities that can easily be done by machines, such as data and report analysis.

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics will improve certain job functions. However, the same technology will probably doom many white-collar jobs that were considered safe for a long time. A good example would be middle-management, architects, attorney’s assistance, and pharmacist. Jobs that are based on routine search or require precise algorithm can easily be replaced by artificial intelligence which is becoming mainstream in many large sales organization using a system like IBM Watson to generate leads.

Most of the sales methods you were taught in the past such as prospecting, storytelling, and closing may no longer work. Buyers are highly educated today and are evolving faster than many salespeople stuck with old methodologies and archaic processes. Survival requires agility of mind and adoption of new selling approaches that incorporate mainstream social media selling techniques along with specialization.

Today, machines learning can send automated customized marketing insight, content marketing and social feedback based on buyers needs and wants. Artificial Intelligence can use predictive analytics to channel lead flow based on detected buyer internet activity and search behavior.

“Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” ~Thomas J. Watson Jr

Moore’s law predicted that computing power doubles every eighteen months, at this speed no sales professional can keep up. However, if you analyze what a sales rep does day in day out, studies have shown that seventy percent of the B2B salesperson activity is simple routine, that can easily be replaced with automated business need analysis technology or telesales.

Uber has recently announced that it will acquire twenty thousand self-driving cars, that’s twenty thousand drivers out a job from its current one million drivers. That’s just the beginning, as Uber intend to replace most its drivers with self-driving cars.

Tesla has large manufacturing facility run almost exclusively with robots. Amazon is using robots to move its merchandise faster within its warehouses.

Technology is changing the way people think, interact and communicate. The average person spends about nine hours a day interacting with some form of technology. People are becoming more virtual than we like to admit it. People prefer to communicate with a screen. It’s safe, exciting and certainly entertaining.

“You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” ~Patricia Fripp

What happens to the old ways?

Relationship and loyalty, these are virtues that salespeople still hold to express how much leverage they have over a buyer. However, these attributes are no longer critical to the buyer who is in total control. The buyer buys when he wants, from whomever he wants and according to criteria he wants. Buyers loyalty is history, most products and salespeople are perceived as commodities. Sales organization have done an excellent job, replicating one another and depressing their prices.

The B2B field salesperson will continue to struggle going forward, margins will continue to decrease, because of similarity of products, lack of elevated differentiation and the fierce competition. The sales cycle will continue to lengthen, and the complexity of products will continue to rise along with the buyer resistance.

Technology is affecting buyer behaviors; consequently, the salesperson must change accordingly to stay relevant. Studies have demonstrated that sales organization will continue to invest in their internal sales force and e-commerce website capability and reach. Consequently, it will lead to the gradual shrinkage of the outside sales force.

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” ~Albert Einstein

Change is imminent

The future may look gloomy, but, it’s a reality. B2B sales will change dramatically, and only the very best salespeople will survive if they adapt quickly, by leveraging all available resources, cultivating a solid personal brand name within the industry they represent.

Furthermore, the top salespeople who manage to add tremendous value and continuous insightful content to the social media sites that are visited by their target buyers will gain a considerable name recognition, create awareness and a competitive advantage over their passive peers.

Finally, becoming synonymous with product mastery is must to win long-term, buyers are willing to pay more to be handled by a well-known solution specialist rather than a sales generalist.

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