The Future of Selling

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In just a 10 minute read I share insights and experiences that I hope ignite your passion for selling and fuel your B2B sales skills.?

I cover a range of topics from complex strategy to outrageous hilarity and everything in between.?

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In today’s Mentoring Moment, I discuss actionable insights on the future of selling.

Recently, I met with a newer salesperson who asked my views on what to expect in the next five to ten years. Below follows the highlights of our conversation:

Where do you see the future of sales?

Well, if we are talking about traditional sales jobs, then I see them disappearing, and being replaced with channels like online ordering. These kinds of sales jobs are on their way out.

But for complex, B2B sales solutions things are getting exciting. And I would call these sales careers, not jobs.?I believe sales is a profession, a career, not a 'job' that is transient.

The craft of selling is increasingly towards sellers becoming business strategists who need to understand their prospects, their prospect’s business strategy, the opportunities and risks their prospect faces in the marketplace.

What's the fastest way that I can learn about my prospect’s business strategy?

There’s two simple, effective ways you can do it. AI will eventually offer more.

First, read the Shareholder’s Report. It is available as a public document on most publicly traded company’s websites.?

It outlines challenges, opportunities, competitors, and areas that you need to design a solution for.

The second way is even easier, and it's more fun.?

If you have clients in the same industry as your prospects, and you certainly will, then go and have coffee with them.?

Ask them about the challenges that keep them up at night, and understand how serious those challenges are, how much time or money they are costing, and what solutions they're thinking of for those challenges.

You can learn a lot from just a simple conversation over coffee with your existing client base, and that knowledge better positions you in business conversations with prospects.

There's a lot of talk about AI in the marketplace and its application for sales.?

But first let's talk about CRM systems briefly.?

Where do you see CRM systems going in the next 5 to 10 years?

The best CRM’s will use AI and big data analytics to identify opportunities faster than humans.

The result will empower salespeople to act on opportunities sooner, so they get involved earlier or more significantly in the buyer’s journey.

Equally as important, the interface and data gathering ability for CRM systems will improve.

The problem currently, is sales people hate inputting data, so they introduce data errors and data gaps. Or they don’t put data in at all!

In the future, CRM’s will need less manual input and will have increased ability to integrate and interpret third party data - say from financial or industry sources.?

Funds Managers and the Investment community is already leveraging AI in this way.

Do you think AI will be used to replace people in prospecting and outreach campaigns?

There's a lot of talk about this in the sales community.?

My sense is for transactional sales, where a relationship or seller knowledge matters less, an AI based prospecting and drip campaign is probable.

But for complex, B2B sales solutions, I see AI empowering the sales person, not replacing the sales person.

Specifically, AI will spot a trend or data that is important to a prospect faster than a human, but it should be a person, not a machine or an algorithm, reaching out to the prospect.

Why do you think that?

I think many buyers will find it insulting that a seller used a machine masquerading as an actual person to reach out to them.

In addition, the potential for AI to make errors are high, with things like nuances in language - which can vary regionally and between industries - or in appropriateness of email structure.

For me, care and trust are two critical parts of the initial stages of developing a buyer relationship.?

I’m not convinced machines will ever convey that.

Whether you're buying a coffee, a car or complex business solution, people need to know you care.?

Buyers need to know that they matter. And they DO matter - they are buying your service or product!?Who's keeping your lights on?

Always be respectful to your prospects.

On trust, people need to trust you if they're going to buy from you.?

If they trust you, and they trust your brand, buyers will pay a premium.?

In the absence of trust, lowest price becomes the main consideration, and no management team likes thin margins.

What are some positives about AI that you see emerging?

I think there's a lot of positives about AI and they will emerge in these forms:

They will allow sales people to make the buying process easier;

Sellers will have better, faster access to relevant and impactful data that impacts the buyer’s journey;

Using machines will make the buying process more seamless and make it easier to do business between buyer and seller.

The overall impact of that will be shortening the sales cycle in appropriate ways.

Let me be clear what I mean by that: don't rush the sale!

But, there are aspects of every sales cycle that can be unnecessarily slow, such as information exchange.

Shorter cycles?and a less confusing buyer’s journey are appreciated by the buying team, and the seller can process more deals in less time.

Everyone wins.

During Covid we replaced in person meetings with virtual meetings. What do you think the future holds?

I think there's a place for both types of meetings, with different applications.?

But I do think there will be a general return to in-person for important prospects and topics.

Virtual is acceptable depending on subject matter, travel budget or prospect stage. And virtual meetings make it easier to share pictures, open charts, or create a collaborative space.

But in-person should be preferred especially if it's a large deal or you need to create a better relationship.?

There's so much more communication that happens through body language, and physically being present.

It’s also advantageous to tour the prospect’s office or production facility, or gather more information by meeting other stakeholders.

So many times I've seen sales people do tours of a prospect's facility, and uncover key observations on things that the prospect never mentioned in their RFP or discussions.?

These observations allowed the sales person to increase the value creation to the prospect and close the deal.

Can we talk about trends in strategy?

More and more sellers are aware that over 50% of the time, the prospect is already on their buyers journey and already knows about you, your company’s reputation, product or service.?

Many sellers are aware that in every deal, there are multiple stakeholders with different interests, and prospects do not want a sales pitch.?

They want a conversation that shows that you understand their business.?

So, if more sellers understand these aspects, what’s the winner’s edge going to look like in the future?

If you watch races or Olympic sports, you know the top 3 places are typically separated by just tenths or even hundredths of a second.

Same is true for sales.?

The winner is the one who has become not only a trusted advisor and demonstrated they are a SME, but they’ve done something more: they provided insights into risks or opportunities that the prospect hadn’t considered.

How they do that, is what will change.

In future, elite sellers will master the ability to use an emerging, wider array of tools to gather information, interpret it, and powerfully communicate their solution with meaningful, relevant? stories that their clients not only remember, but they repeat to others inside their organization.

The ability to tell memorable ‘why change’ stories is critical.?

Sellers never get invited to the buyers’ closed door final decision meeting.?

So if internal stakeholders don’t understand your story and can’t repeat your ‘why change’ business case, you lose.

Couple more questions. What’s the future for Social Media augmented Selling?

Easy.?

It’s increasing.?

Top performers use it, they know what channel or channels to reach their buyers, and they never pitch. They capture mindshare.?

Top organizations will devote more resources to support their sellers in channel selection, content creation and make it easy for their sellers to be successful on Social Media, regardless of their familiarity with it.

In the future, sellers who post the relevant content at the right time, on the right channel will get into more deals.

Last Question.

Pardon the pun, but can we ‘close’ with a story about a deal that you failed to close?

LOL.

Every sales team will have deals where they know without a doubt, that they have done everything right.?

Our team lost a deal like this and it drove me crazy trying to figure it out.

We knew we did everything right, we knew we were competitively priced, and yet we didn’t get the deal.?

I lost a lot of sleep over it.?

I started to doubt my ability and doubt my analysis of the deal.

About two years after that deal I hired an Account Manager from the competitor who won it.?

Over coffee, she filled me in on the details.?

My prospect had a close friendship with a rep working for that competitor and took my solution and pricing, and gave it to the competitor to execute on.

Seriously.

I had to laugh at all this, but the lack of integrity made me sad.?

However, that is the way of sales.?

Things will happen behind closed doors that you will never know and have no control over.

It is the edge of your seat ride that makes the profession so rewarding - and hopefully will never change in the future.