What can Dave teach us about B2B sales in 2021?

No one can deny it's been a particularly tough year for B2B sales, with more than 53% of white-collar workers now working remotely it's meant organizations have needed to prioritize agility and adapt to customer needs to stay ahead of the game.

I have a friend called Dave (not Grohl), who joined a business in lockdown that offers purely B2B solutions for an audience that is notoriously discerning, and a sales team previously used to selling face-to-face who mentioned to me that his first six months were something of a trial by fire.

All things aside Dave is now doing quite well. He managed to help realign the company's thinking to accommodate the shift in buyer behaviour that 2020 brought about, and has ensured their sales team overachieved against targets.

Dave was lucky, he works for an agile digital business that has very few legacy processes in place to hinder change. The team is modest enough so as not to create too many internal silos, and there's consistent communication between everyone in the company.

Speaking (loudly) to Dave over a coffee in the local park at a socially responsible two-metre distance the other day, I asked him how he managed to achieve success at such a trying time.

He said to me 'Greig, we now live in a time where disruptions are the new norm, and companies need to support new ways and methods of working to further business agility and visibility in market.'

He then went on to provide these five bits of advice, which I've reinterpreted below.

1. Shift in Customer Needs

Let's call 2020 the year of the pivot; the pandemic brought an almost instantaneous recession and with it wild proclamations about the end of retail, commuting, live events and centrally based offices....

Hyperbole aside, what the pandemic identified was the need for business transformation across nearly every sector, and with it a focus on digital.

Digital based communication became our lifeline to friends, family, clients and colleagues, and eCommerce was suddenly our only way of getting toilet paper.

In 2020 our clients needs shifted, and as a business we were able to capitalize on this by presenting a message that solved their new problems, our products hadn't changed We just altered our approach.

2. Departmental Realignment

'I went to an interview once'. Dave tells me. 'For a commercial role at a leading PR agency. They asked me, what's the difference between PR and Sales, to which I replied, Nothing they're two sides of the same coin'.

He went on to tell me that he didn't get the job, but wants to use this as an example of how businesses need more alignment between sales and marketing.

The modern salesperson needs to be a marketer, and by that I mean that nurture needs to be part of their sales process. They need to understand that a marketing strategy is a multi-faceted approach to selling that takes a much longer and broader view of the sales cycle.

Salespeople can be very short-sighted and impatient, they're just built that way, and their targets and training develop this within them over the course of their careers.

But, good salespeople are the patient ones who work closely with marketing on KPI's that help grow the entire business, rather than just their own pipelines.

We instilled this new approach and got the marketing and sales teams fully aligned with sales leading the strategy. This led to new initiatives and exciting opportunities to connect with prospects and existing customers.?

3. Tactics Vs. Strategy

To be truly agile you need a management team that is able to unify their entire business, and help develop a strategy that reflects each department's priorities with a number of tactics designed as steppingstones to achieve longer-term strategic objectives.

Strategy is based on extensive research, planning and internal reflection across all departments. Some management teams can lose sight of how important it is to utilize internal capabilities and can, as a result of this this, produce strategy autonomous of any input from colleagues that work on the day-to-day running of the organization.

Tactics however are more short term, and are often owned by employees managing departments. So, ensuring your teams are aligned on the outcomes of each tactic, and have a clear monitoring process in place to keep track should make it easy for everyone to stay on track.

Too often though tactics get blamed for bad strategy, misalignment of KPIs or just poor monitoring.

We developed a single strategy as a company, supported by departmental tactics, each one owned by the heads of department. Weekly meetings were set up to analyse results and we offered our colleagues praise and support where necessary.

4. Sales is Everyone's Responsibility

The sales function is the beating heart of any business, and I think sometimes sales departments get a bad rep.

Sales is a mentally demanding job where you deal with rejection on daily basis, the pressure of targets and the requirement to understand a client's needs as much as they do. Throw on top of that the fact that all meetings are now hosted on Zoom and not face-to-face offers an additional layer of complexity.

It's important for everyone in the business to be encouraged to get involved and take an active role in the sales process. Whether that's referrals, research, proposal preparation or facetime with clients.

A business that puts sales first will succeed in challenging times, because it becomes everyone's concern and not just the individuals with the word sales in their job title.

I was lucky enough to join a business that already thought like this, and that taught me a few things about how to ask my colleagues for help.

5. Workplace Communication

This may seem obvious, but it is proven to be an extremely challenging year for people's mental health; juggling work and home-life, kids, job insecurity and health concerns have made people very on-edge.

During times of uncertainty, it is important to keep staff informed about the future of the business and their place within it, mitigating instances of insecurity and fear.

From a peer-to-peer perspective it is an incredibly important time to bond with your colleagues as much as you can, to strengthen your working relationship and offer support where necessary.

Regular team meetings where you do not discuss work, messages of appreciation and thanks are just some of the things I prioritise every day to ensure my colleagues know I'm grateful for their support.

In conclusion...

Dave then went on to tell me that a lot of this is pretty much common sense, but unlike his current employers businesses get it wrong all the time, because these initiatives need to be driven by a top-down approach that requires trust and not control!

#sales #salestraining #marketing #marketingtraining #business #successfulsales #salesstrategy #businessstrategy #salestransformation

https://www.greigdowling.com/