The past year has been a huge disruption for sales organizations. As technology evolves, the future of sales looks more exciting than ever before!
It’s time to rethink how your sales teams are set up, the processes that they employ and the skillsets they need. Sales leaders will need to hone their empathy and understanding of the buyer’s journey. They will also need to focus on ensuring that they have access to the right data to make their decisions. And they will need to be able to convert those insights into tangible sales growth opportunities for their business.
As a result, many legacy sales strategies no longer align with today’s connected customer. For example, Salesforce’s recent acquisition of Slack illustrates how sales functions are embracing collaborative technologies that facilitate easy connections with the front office and the entire organization.
In a rapidly evolving economy, the best salespeople are those who can quickly adapt to change. This requires a deeper level of analytics capabilities and real-time, forward-looking analysis. The pandemic has also highlighted the need for sales teams to have a greater capacity for remote work. It has been shown that a well- trained remote sales team can generate up to 50% more revenue than their in- person counterparts.
The digital revolution has given buyers control of the search and discovery process. They seek out reviews, recommendations and advocacy from influencers rather than relying on traditional advertising methods. As a result, B2B buyers are looking for more personalized approaches from salespeople.
To meet buyer expectations and drive conversions, the modern sales function must reimagine the way it delivers personalized experiences. This includes enabling them to track the entire path from awareness through to purchase, while measuring their performance at each stage. It will also require a deeper level of collaboration between the sales and marketing departments.
A reimagined sales function will be more customer-centric, agile and data-driven. It will enable buyers to connect with the brand in a more personalized and convenient manner. It will deliver the value that customers have come to expect. This will allow sales teams to build trusted relationships with their customers and help them make smarter buying decisions.
Taking the lead on innovation and driving change is challenging for most people. The key is to identify the areas that can be improved, and then design a plan for how to do it.
A well-defined innovation funnel can help you do just that. However, the funnel must be designed so that it doesn’t discourage creativity or stifle innovation.
It must be balanced with a rigorous evaluation of each idea’s viability before it can progress to the final stage of launch. The goal is to weed out underperforming ideas systematically and with defendable logic. This will help you minimize risk and cost while accelerating the success of those that prove to be winners.
Learn how To build sales funnels
Check out my recent post on all-in-one sales and marketing tools and what I think of it.
Check out my recent post on sales funnels and what I think about them. Are they still worth it?
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