In his book "Sell the way you Buy" David Priemer talks about the time he ran a team of outbound Salespeople at Salesforce (SFDC) and they merrily spent the day cold calling, emailing, texting, in fact doing anything they could to get meetings and "push" people through the sales funnel.

The David talks about he gets home and he spends all his time trying to stop his time being hijacked by salespeople who seem to spend all their time trying to bombard him with call, emails, texts; trying to get him to buy something.

Hence, why he called his book "sell the way you buy".

He talks about the rise of the "Unconscious Seller".  He explains, this to be that sellers, sell the way they are taught to sell.  If the person is told to make 100 dials a day, then that's what they do, they don't think or ask if there is more efficient and effective ways to sell.

If you are a Seller or a Marketer, suspend your expert skills for a second, I need to take you through some research on how people buy.

On to the research ....

2020 is Changing How People Buy Software

The research has the headline paragraph ...

"The coronavirus pandemic sparked severe changes in the B2B tech world. Marketers at software companies already saw a gap between the way they market technology and the way buyers want to engage with them. COVID-19 intensified that disconnect.

Buyers are now demanding self-service options that not all vendors offer. In a market where most interactions are online, buyers are increasingly concerned about data privacy and security—enough to ruthlessly cut products from their shortlist. They’re also frustrated by the marketing tactics that vendors love to use. 

The B2B Buying Disconnect exposes these gaps and helps vendors learn how to market better in the ever-changing world of 2021."

Let's Look a a Break Down of the Data

Millennials Have Changed The Buying Landscape

"Millennials now make up the biggest demographic of tech buyers, representing 60% and growing fast. Gen X currently represents 32% and Baby Boomers represent only 6% of tech buyers."

"Our data shows that millennials and Gen Z buyers are less likely than older generations to use analyst rankings and reports while purchasing business technology. Over the past few years, buyer usage of analyst rankings and reports has steadily decreased. This year only 21% of buyers say they’re using analyst rankings and reports, which represents a 15% decrease from last year. This is a serious concern for traditional analyst firms."

Millenials and Gen Z Do Their Research Online When They Buy 

"Gen Z (24 and younger) and Millennial buyers (age 25-39) are also more likely than older generations to first find out about a product by searching online. Baby boomers are more likely to hear about tech products from their own prior experience."

B2B Buyers Hate The Tactics From Sellers and Marketers

"When asked what their marketing pet peeves were, buyers’ number one and two responses were marketing emails and sales cold calls. While this isn’t exactly surprising (who loves cold calls?), it highlights the growing disconnect between tech marketers and their buyers."

"Digging deeper, we asked buyers how likely they would be to respond to these tactics. Unsurprisingly, over 90% of buyers say they are “not likely at all”  to respond to non-personalized messages and cold calls."

This is pretty damning indictment on current sales and marketing

95% of people ignore emails

93 % of people ignore cold calls

90% of people ignore chatbots

81% of people ignore targeted ads

57% of people ignore notices about online events

A summary of where are so far is that the vast majority of people that are buying today are Millennials, they are searching online and "everybody" ignores current marketing tactics. 

Covid19 Has Changed The Buyer Process

"The pandemic has changed how much time buyers devote to different parts of the buying journey. We found that:

33% of buyers spend more time researching products now than before the pandemic. 

35% of buyers spend more time clearly defining ROI than they did before the pandemic.

25% of buyers spend less time talking with vendor representatives than they did before the pandemic."

"As a result, a majority of vendors (57%) report that deal cycles are now longer than they were before the pandemic. Of the vendors that have had longer deal cycles since the beginning of the pandemic, over half say that pre-sales engagement, lead nurturing, and negotiation take longer than they did before."

 Which is interesting as our clients have found that deal cycles have shortened.

"The buyer’s journey is further muddied by the fact that the majority of tech professionals are still working from home. "

"An even larger percentage of B2B tech vendors (66%) report working from home all of the time. Compared with the statistics from Gallup, employees working for a technology vendor are 3X as likely to be fully remote than the average American worker."

This means that sellers are now having to grapple with the issue about selling virtually.

Selling The Way People Buy

From this research, it is clear that people are not selling or marketing the way people buy.  In fact it would seem that things are polar opposite.

It would also seem that we have many, many, unconscious sellers and marketers who are doing the "same old thing".  Why? Probably because they don't know any different. 

What Do You Need To Do

From this research, your business needs to make a change as the cold calling, the advertising and the email marketing isn't working. 

The Businesses That Are Winning Have Switched to Social Media

Even before the pandemic there was a switch to working online, but Covid19 has accelerated that.

In this October 2020 report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.  

Worldwide social media users: 4.14 billion - 53% of the world's population use social media in other words, more people use social media than don't use it.

Simon

says that two thirds of the working population in the world is now active on social media.

You Need a Strategic Approach to Social

Everything you do on social, needs a strategic approach.  

Your profile(s), are a shop window to the world.  Your Linkedin profile needs to work hard for you.

You need to be connected to the people and accounts you want to influence.

You need to be able to create content that is relevant and resonants with your clients.

But Tim We Need Results Quick

I totally get that you need results quick and anybody that says "social selling takes a long time" does not know what they are talking about. 

I was on the phone today with a new consultant for one of our resellers and he said "at my last company we were told to work Linkedin and if we didn't see results in 6 weeks we had to move onto another vertical". 

Looking at the company he worked profile it is very clear there is no methodology.  The company and the people all looked the same as everybody else on social media.  The sales people look like ...... just another bunch of salespeople.  The message was "buy my product because we are great" which is the same as everybody else.  Guess what?  They got little or no traction on social.

So what do I mean by a "strategic" approach to social and what do I mean by a "methodology"? 

Selling on Social Case Study

This is Eric, he's one of the team at DLA Ignite and he got 6 C-Level meetings from this post. The post took him 10 minutes too create.  

This usually shocks people. 

How can a post about Eric's 16 year old son get 18,000 views and 165 likes?

But better still, how can a post like this get 6 - C-Level meetings?

Because, all of Eric's post are strategic.  He knows exactly why he is posting it and knows how to monetise it.

A Quick Look at Our Content Pyramid

Based on our research, we have created this pyramid of content.  Advertising is of course at the bottom, with humanised content at the top.

How As a Sales Person Do I get 6 C-Level Meetings From Post a Piece Of Content?

1. First you need a great profile.  Think about the needs of your audience and work back from there.  Your prospects and clients do not need the world's best salesperson they need somebody to help them.  Your Linkedin profile is your shop window and should show case you 24 hours a day.  The days that Linkedin was a CV have long gone.

2. You need a network (not contacts).  The average person on Linkedin has 903 contacts and they will be x colleagues and recruitment consultants.  You need to be connected to the people you want to influence.  Your prospects, your target accounts, your customers, the people influential in your markets.  Remember that in B2B the trick is to be memorable.

3. Finally you need content.  When somebody comes to your Linkedin profile, you need content to show people what you stand for.  That does not mean you need humanised content all the time.  You need to have content that educates that provides insight, tell me something I don't know!

That said, humanised content will get you the most engagement and it is that engagement that having a methodology will enable you to monetize that engagement.

This is how Eric got 6 x C-Level meetings from that post ..... that only took him 10 minutes to create. 

The Payoff

Everytime we run this program, we get 30% increase in revenue and a 40% reduction in the sales cycle.

There are also some softer benefits, you and your team get a new life skill and as a leader you are providing the business with a digital legacy.  Supporting the transformation to digital for the business.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Just give me, or one of the DLA Ignite team and hour of your time and we can walk you through what we are doing for other companies.  No hard sell, just take you through what other companies are doing to transform.

Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality.  Our website is here.