SALES TRENDS FOR 2024

It's that time of the year to look ahead and predict what's in store for all of us who make a living selling something to someone (which is most of us).

I've therefore taken into account what fellow small businesses have been telling me this year, as well as having looked at a number of respected sales and marketing resources - to come up with my list of top 6 sales trends for 2024:

1. Sales Enablement
2. Remote/Hybrid sales
3. ABS (Account Based Sales)
4. Customer Self-Service
5. Customer Success
6. Tighter Buyer Budgets

1. Sales Enablement: This term refers to how business owners and sales leaders can better enable their sales teams to improve sales performance. The obvious enabler is the adoption of AI and automating more of your sales function. A couple of quick and easy wins would be using AI tools such as Chat GPT to help you write better sales proposals and presentations and creating a portfolio of short shareable videos for use with your prospects. Look at your sales tech stack too (back end and front tech used for selling) and evaluate which parts of your overall process you can automate, in order to free up more 'face to face' selling time with prospects and existing customers. Also, consider compiling a sales playbook for more more continuity and consistency with how you do your selling.
2. Remote/Hybrid Sales: Remote (inside) sales is what most of us had to do during Covid (through necessity) but many have stuck with this model or at least adopted a hybrid model, combining both remote and face to face outside sales. Remote sales often suits customers preferences (many who are time poor) plus it provides improved productivity for non-travelling salespeople but your customer's preferences and the length of your sales cycle will determine what's best for you. There's no substitute, however, for being in front of your customer, reading their non-verbal clues and influencing them - especially for higher value, longer cycle sales.
3. ABS (Account Based Sales): This term refers to segmenting out your market and targeting the higher value more lucrative segments. You can also use this strategy to target specific decision makers. This a basic bit of marketing that many businesses fail to do but it will help you work smarter, generate better quality leads and give you a better return on your marketing spend. Adopting this strategy will also help you negate the affects of no. 6 (tighter buyers budgets).
4. Customer Self Service: One way you can help facilitate more customer purchases, more quickly is by providing a self-serve experience. Even B2B sellers are adopting this B2C type strategy. Self service tools can include product demos, free trials, downloadable case studies, having a curated shareable list of social proof e.g. customer/user reviews, endorsements etc. and using a chatbot for the more simple sales related conversations e.g. answering frequently asked questions. Think about selling things that will earn you passive income too or at least generate leads e.g. white papers, help guides, cheat sheets, online training courses or book sales (as I've done).
5. Customer Success: This is the proactive bit of customer service that many businesses neglect. Customer support is reacting to your customer's questions in good time, whereas customer success is anticipating your customer's challenges or questions and proactively providing solutions and answers, whilst enhancing their overall satisfaction. Regular customer reviews are essential for anticipating customer's challenges and this will set you apart from your competitors who purely focus on just reactive customer support. Staying in regular touch with you customers will also help ward off any competitors who might come knocking on your customers doors.
6. Tighter Buyer's Budgets: 2023 saw a year long cost of living crisis, higher inflation, higher business costs and a stagnant economy with low consumer confidence. 2024 is predicted to be pretty much the same but with inflation finally coming down - there should be some improvement from Q2 of 2024 onwards. That said, B2B and B2C buyers will still be cautious about how much they want to spend. This means sellers need to position themselves more as a friend by showing more empathy and understanding. Relationship selling and customer centric selling come into their own during harder times like these. This means putting your customer at the centre of your business and making sure each staff member understands their role in supporting and helping your customers.

2024 can still be a good year for growing your business but you'll need to be more realistic with your sales/revenue targets and your own budgets. Keep your customers close, keep a close eye on the market and the competition and monitor your close rates/ratio - to spot any emerging negative trends.

Happy new year and happy selling.

PS. I can provide a FREE sales health-check for those of you who are less sales confident about the year ahead!