A Catch-22 Came to Sales. What are You Doing About it?

Have you been building a customer base that doesn’t want your sales people around???A lot of companies are working their butts off – and investing huge sums on sophisticated technology stacks which are building towards just that.

There’s a Self-Feeding, Self-Defeating Cycle.

Many of us have been led to believe that, since customers thoroughly self-inform before engaging salespeople, that selling processes should be about aligning with the portion of the customer’s buying process that we still have access to.??

Furthermore, since the customer already knows their needs, we can shove reactive “human pain point detectors” in front of them…using sales methodologies to accurately uncover, then mirror the customer’s self-informed (and presumably perfectly-formed) need set. Succeeding at sales is based on the assumption that the most compliant seller wins.??

This is a low-differentiation strategy (everyone sells to the same requirement set), which drives the need for process efficiency.??

Since a customer-led sales process no longer requires sellers to be very expert in the customer’s business, sellers can simply “divide and optimize”.??An entire industry helps us split our selling process into components, then optimize processes, metrics, hiring, training, etc. at the component level.??Divide and optimize is about selling efficiency. Here's a key aspect of this model: becoming a trusted expert for a customer is simply an inefficient extravagance.

It’s a race to the bottom.??We’re chasing a false ideal:??the most efficient, most reactive sales process.

Here’s the Catch-22. As we optimize a reactive sales process, we structure sales organizations unable to build trusted advisor relationships. This very pursuit reinforces customers’ belief that sales people are horrible sources of expertise…which drives customers to the same salesperson-avoiding behavior that started the whole cycle.?

The Only Winners Are the Arms Dealers.

A “sales industrial complex” has emerged which tells us that customers self-inform, so we should sell efficiently to self-informed customers.??If you can sell undifferentiated products more efficiently than your competitors -- or worse: sell differentiated products like they're undifferentiated commodities -- you can scrape out a win (especially if you can afford to discount heavily...and still call it a win).??But you have to stay ahead of the competition.??

The “Martech arms race” solves their growth problem…just not yours. Two trends illustrate the dynamic when you hold them up side-by-side:

1. In 2006, maybe 100 sales and marketing technology solutions existed.?By 2020, there were over 8,000.??
2. In 2006, 19% of B2B sales ended in “no decision”.??By 2020, “no decision” climbed to?somewhere between 50 and 60%,?depending on whose research you believe.

Despite ballooning B2B sales automation, sales effectiveness has fallen off a cliff.??I don’t claim that automation?caused the problem, but it’s pretty apparent it?hasn’t helped.

Escaping a Broken Paradigm.

If buyer self-informing behavior is locked in, there is no need to expend energy changing that customer behavior.?However,?if buyers are willing to engage with trusted experts, we can break the cycle.?

Selling organizations who figure out how to escape this “vortex of pain” can enter a wide-open playing field.??Only 3% of sellers are considered trusted advisors.??85% of sellers “don’t understand me or my business”.

In?2018, CSO Insights?found…and in?2021, Sales Mastery reconfirmed…that many customers are willing to engage with sellers much earlier in the buying process if the decision is:

• New to me or my company
• Risky to me or my company
• About a complex solution

In reality, that happens pretty often.??I have developed a quick diagnostic device to help you find out how closely your customers resemble the kind of customer who wants an expert. Contact me?for your free copy.

Making Your Escape

If you find your customers are willing to engage an expert, the next challenge is how to build a team of trusted experts.??This means investing more in your people than in your tech stack, although some tech solutions are coming available that multiply and facilitate expertise.

Your people probably need more business acumen than they currently possess.??They also need more customer value empathy than you’ve been helping them develop.??Maybe you also need to brush up on how your differentiation turns into customer value…and how to facilitate customer conversations that build perceived value.

Reach out?if you’d like to learn more about what that looks like for you.??If you think it might be easier, grab a copy of my book to read over the holidays.??

To Your success!