We are in the biggest crisis our industry has seen, and I don’t mean the result of the economic headwinds, as problems like this come and go, just like the wind itself. I’m talking about the macro trend that’s been developing over the last 10+ years.
Since 2010 Brent Adamson and Matt Dixon through their extensive buyer and sales rep research found that the world of B2B sales was changing. Buyers had access to more information online than ever before, and they were forming their decision before speaking with vendor sales reps.
Today, if you are not feeling it yourself, there is no shortage of data points confirming old techniques no longer work. It’s official, sales reps are no longer one of the top 5 assets buyers use as an information source to inform their purchase decision, with communities and forums taking their spot:
I particularly like the Forbes article where Gary Drenik interviews TrustRadius CEO Vinay Bhagat and called it, ‘What Significant Shifts in B2B Buyer Behaviour Means For 2023’ and in the research Vinay references where his organisation surveyed more than 1,300 B2B tech buyers, and below I share just some of the key takeaways, 2022 Buying Disconnect: The Age of the Self-Serve Buyer:
- Virtually 100% of buyers want to self-serve part or all of the buying journey, up 13% from 2021.
- Use of nearly all vendor-provided information sources declined from 2021 to 2022, with vendor reps dropping by 18%.
- Buyers named cold-calling (64%) as the number one reason they are less likely to buy a product from a vendor.
- 40% of buyers named “having to contact sales for a demo” among the three things vendors do to make them less likely to buy.
Really, …who in this day and age is leading with a demo as part of your sales (buyer) process?
What’ clear is:
- Buyers don’t want to speak with sellers because they get sold to.
- Traditional content marketing to nurture contacts in the sales funnel doesn’t work, as buyers don’t believe what they’re reading anymore.
I don’t know about you but for me this calls into question the foundation the entire B2B sales and marketing approach is built on. My experience tells me this. Plus the countless number of articles and research done by credible companies like Forrester, Gartner, Forbes and Harvard Business Review. The data doesn’t lie.
Whether you’re in sales and your cold calling, emailing, trudging events in a desperation to build relationships, or in marketing, where your tirelessly creating and refining your messaging, building and executing lead nurture campaigns using marketing automation technology, ...the only single truth you know, is that 99% of everything you do is wasted. Surprised? I hope not. Blood, sweat, tears and lots of cash, thrown down the toilet on the quest for the 1% conversion rate. There must be a better way. But how?
What if the traditional sales funnel was flipped on its head?
Think about that for a moment. The beginning of the sales motion is reversed and better still, amplified, so that potential customers, partners and future employees 'see you' and walk towards you… with interest… and they want to get to know, you!
We can all dream :-) …never in a month of Sundays are you going to make such a decision. Unless the risk of going out of business was so high there was no choice.
The title of this article is ‘How do I open more doors’ so let’s get to that.
Given the reality of the situation, if opening more doors, building new relationships at scale and growing your business is the objective, something must change with the traditional sales and marketing approach.
It’s time accept our world looks and is very different to what it was. People have always bought from people, so lets empower the people within our organisation to develop their personal brand, and activate their networks, where we know their target audiences are.
People are the one truly unique thing organisations have, so let's enable them.
But you know this already. So why not enable them to increase the companies visibility, pipeline, revenue and market share. Become the number one technical and digital commercial leader that your target audience turns to.
Empower your best assets, your people to walk digital corridors safely and effectively. People buy from people and personality trumps brand - when it comes to selling products or services people buy from those they know, like and trust.
Which is why the following skills are required for businesses to be successful in 2023 and beyond.
- Personal Brand; We've all developed a professional brand to support our career objectives over the years, but what about humanising it, help your network get to know the real you. Build a full and fruitful profile across all of the digital assets customers, prospects and partners spend time on, telling the story that demonstrates you are an expert in your field and lead them to the conclusion you want, will be critical to your digital success going forward.
- Network Growth; Like most, you have probably grown your network over time, with no real strategy or sense of purpose, which is okay. Network growth rate is a leading indicator of performance for digital selling. How big is your network, across which platforms and what is your network growth rate?
- Content Creator; There’s only one way to activate any digital network. Create content that makes the individual look different, like an expert, like someone that can help. Like learning anything new, it takes practise and time to become good at it - persevere with it, develop your creativity muscle and don't be afraid to enlist the support of a specialist to help you develop.
- Engage; Opening more doors comes from a result of increasing engagement. When engagement is received on the content you've published, there's your opportunity to say thank you, a reason to open a dialogue and nurture the messaging exchange toward a call, leveraging the topic you wrote about. Engaging where your audience is - dropping likes, comments and engaging in conversation on popular topics and content your audience is, will make you visible, appear like an expert to those you want to engage with, increasing the probability they will accept your connection when you reach out.
With quota attainment dropping across the industry, consider how effective this approach could be if you were developing more pipeline and closed more deals as a result of your decision making / stakeholder groups seeing you pop up on their timelines, as the industry expert you and your team are.
- 66% of professionals said they would be more likely to recommend a company or brand if they followed a company executive on social media
- Social selling leaders are also 51% more likely to reach their quota
What if each team member activated their existing networks with a new strategy today.
We work with a range of companies across different sectors, a recent client who recently completed our 12-week training program, empowered a group of sales and product marketing folks, and within 4 months had written 336 pieces of content between them, increased their aggregate network size by 12%, received more than 4,000 pieces of engagement which resulted in:
- £1M of new pipeline within the first 10 weeks.
- Closed £253k new business revenue by the end of the 16 week.
- Nurturing a £500M strategic global opportunity.
When teams appear as experts, stand out and make themselves visible within their target market, the number of relevant conversations they generate and the speed in which they build trust with new prospects has a compounding effect.
Your first step to understanding what this approach can mean to you and your organisation is to drop me a DM and learn more. I look forward to hearing from you :-)
#B2BSales#DigitalSelling #ValueSelling #WalkingDigitalCorridors #Enablement
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