Is the B2B sales role dying or not?
In April 2015, Forrester Research published what was as a ground breaking look into the future of sales. Forrester forecast that:
“1 million US B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service eCommerce by the year 2020”,
Whilst alarming to many (including me), this 2015 prediction was tantamount to a 22% reduction in B2B sales roles globally. When I stopped and thought about it, this sounded plausible to me given the accelerating nature of disruptive business models, automation technology and the incessant focus (at that point in time) on customer self-service as a means by which to drive down the cost of acquisition. Like many sales people, I began to worry.
Well, it’s now 2020 and the question that everyone in the business world is asking is: was Forrester’s 2015 prediction accurate? Short answer – it’s impossible to tell without conducing a serious research project, but all indications point towards Forrester’s prediction being more right than wrong.
2020 - the current state of B2B sales:
Before we launched SalesTribe back in early 2017 we commissioned KPMG Australia to conduct some market sizing around B2B salespeople. The findings of this high-level assessment were indicative at best (seems it was impossible to get an accurate picture that could be validated), but it did point to an approximate number of 15M full-time salespeople employed in B2B sales roles - globally.
During the intervening period since 2017, there have been a multitude of public announcements by large vendor organisations, many of whom have dramatically downsized their sales operations resulting in a lot of high cost sales roles being displaced. And this is just the ones that we know about.
Microsoft, Oracle, CA, IBM (to name just a few large tech vendors) have all dramatically transformed their sales departments as the traditional field sales role is replaced with a remote (inside) sales role, and with more and more B2B buyers preferring to self-serve, the trend is becoming clearer.
In the absence of any quantitative data to back this up, here’s what I believe.
- There has been a massive increase in the numbers of Inside Sales roles as businesses realise that a ‘heavy touch’ feild sales role is increasingly not required. Heavy touch, sales-led business models are simply not cost effective when competing with the low cost-to-serve digital native organisations.
- The continued explosion of XaaS business models has also translated into massive growth in Customer Success departments…everyone has now woken up to the fact that “customer churn” is really the single metric that determines your success/failure in a subscription world.
- Sales Enablement (SE) is another emergent role with massive investment now going into building standalone SE departments.
Anecdotally, I can also say that many of my own friends, colleagues and associates who have (like me) had long term careers in sales are now finding themselves facing the stiff headwinds of career turbulence. Most of them are now in and out of roles more frequently, with many now feeling more vulnerable than ever before.
Thus, it’s my humble opinion that Forrester was right on the money with their 2015 prediction. However, the caveat is that I also believe that lots of those salespeople that have been turfed out of their traditional field sales roles have successfully migrated into a range of newer roles that now feature more broadly in businesses – SDR, BDR, Sales Enablement Mgr and Customer Success Mgr. You only need look at LinkedIn to see exactly what I’m saying about the growth of these newer roles.
A glimpse into the future:
Disruption has always created new and innovative business models and new models always create new operating models which in turn cascade down to impact operations and create new roles. Every business is now a digital business and the continued shift from offline to online purchasing (B2C and B2B) is undeniably changing the role of the middleman. In many industries the most in-demand occupations did not exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of this type of change is set to accelerate even further.
Case in point: My colleagues and I run a small but growing business (SalesTribe) and like many other recently founded companies, we utilise a range of technologies, tools and platforms to run our business on a daily basis:
- AWS for hosting.
- Google Suite for email, storage, docs, sheets, slides and collaboration tools.
- HubSpot for CRM and Marketing Automation.
- Xero for financials.
- Zoom & Slack for comms.
- Monday.com for team & task management.
- Stripe for payments.
- VideoMyJob for video production.
So get this: of all these aforementioned suppliers to SalesTribe, we have only spoken with one single salesperson (from HubSpot), and that’s a MONUMENTAL shift from just 5 years ago when practically every business was running a heavy touch sales-led model which required a person to be engaged for every transaction….regardless of deal size or complexity.
Does all of this change mean less sales roles?
Mark Twain once wrote that "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated", and the extent to which Forrester was right or wrong with their 2015 prediction is practically impossible to determine. However, as it stands now in 2020, you would have to be a fool if you think that the traditional role of the B2B salesperson has not irrevocably changed, for all the reasons stated in this article.
Natural market forces will always compel business leaders to find more cost effective and efficient means by which to create and service demand, and whilst sales and marketing remains the single largest cost component (as a percentage of revenue) for most businesses, it’s fairly likely that process innovation will continue impacting the B2B sales (and marketing) roles. It’s just inevitable.
If you don’t like change, you will like irrelevance even less” – Eric Shinseki.
Are you employing more salespeople now than you did in 2015?
Is your sales team growing or contracting?
Are you now making the transition into a non-sales role?
Have your field salespeople migrated to some of the newer roles that drive CX and LCV?
By Graham Hawkins
(Author, Speaker, and CEO of SalesTribe)
SalesTribe
SalesTribe is the first business of its kind (globally) which has been designed specifically to assist B2B sales people, many of whom now require career guidance and access to new career opportunities.
SalesTribe also helps small businesses get access to the best sales resources to help accelerate growth, reduce 'time-to-revenue' and reduce the cost-of-acquisition.
- Sales people need new opportunities.
- Small businesses need access to ‘on-demand’ sales best practices.
- SalesTribe makes those connections.
NIA Franchise owner | Founder of MCA2 | B2B Sales and Marketing Growth ???? Consultant | Trainer & Keynote Speaker | 2x Author | Leveraging AI ??
4 年Bob Perkins, in researching my next book on B2B sales I called up my Idaho Department of Labor and I found out that it was impossible to tell how many people with the title of salesperson have been hired and/or left voluntary or involuntary. They don’t require companies to list what roles the employee held, only the turnover rate. I was trying to prove my theory that salespeople turnover was worse than all the studies out there that go off of an honor system, Ask sales management, “What was your turnover in 2019?”. Most in sales management don’t even really know and the scariest part, most haven’t figured the cost of horrendous turnover. If that were known, most likely sales management would be fired. The way buyers buy has and continues to change as Graham Hawkins has talked about for years and the need for outside salespeople will shrink. Then add in the cost of an outside salesperson vs. inside salesperson, combined with the COVID-19 forcing more sales to be done in an inside sales model, the overall outlook for outside salespeople will just continue to shrink and it looks grim for an outside salesperson as a career. Side note: I just found out that two years ago in the USA that the tax laws changed, and a W2 salesperson cannot write off all of their unreimbursed business expenses, mileage, meals, on and on that they used to be able to write off. When I was in a sales role as a W2 employee, I always wrote off a lot of unreimbursed business expenses, and it would have been a huge down in my total compensation. The company can pay for it and write it off, but it will just add to the cost of having an outside salesperson. It's just another nail in the coffin for the role of an outside salesperson.
CEO and Co Founder of Apprento
4 年Written pre Covid and never been truer post Covid... on the money Graham!
Owner at "African Indawo" Your Unique conference & Event Solution"
4 年Interesting & very valid Graham Hawkins however there are two elements missing you still need, the relationship & the trust by the client when he is directed and made aware of the product online. In the hospitality industry irrespective how sophisticated the websites & booking engine are they don't offer flexibility to offer the alternative dates. Sales & banqueting people do that, once again relationship will come into play.
Let's share good ideas and make things happen ?
4 年A nicely balanced and thought-provoking post. Tech and Generational Shift together will likely continue to have a strong impact on B2B sales roles. Environmental pressures might also prove to be a strong trend impacting on the "field role" in the 2020's, IMHO. So, how we work and the tools and methods we use must change and evolve to deliver effectiveness and value over time. That was a great quote from Shinseki, by the way! #innovation
Sales Student
4 年CX is where it's at baby!?