When SAP© hired London-based Loudhouse, the research division of Octopus Group specializing in B2B “brand to sales” technology, to produce their “What’s the Future of Sales” study and paper, I was skeptical on whether there would be significant insight to help predict the future. This was a tall order considering the immense diversity and complexity of the global tech industry. The study, however, derived some interesting insights to emerging trends, changing benchmarks, and new strategic thinking on how technology is being bought across 1,200 well respected global business buyers. There must be something here?
You Can’t Handle the Truth
The research presents a paradigm shift amid corporate and enterprise purchasers that the axioms we hold true – Consultative Selling, sell as a Trusted Advisor, don’t sell and help our prospect to make the best possible decision, etc., are not as steadfast as we thought. With all the highly effective sales methodologies, the best CRM, the best sales operations systems, value selling methodologies or customer-centric selling, and sales intelligence applications and account based sales tools, etc., there is still an undercurrent impacting our ability to drive more revenue for our respective companies.
Prove It to Me
I think practically all enterprise sales teams in technology, services, and products have heard often and clearly that the buyer is better informed and more aggressive in their research that they literally take 70% of our sales cycle into their own hands before we ever have an opportunity to walk in the door and say hello! With that, we as sales people must be more decisive, more astute, and faster in getting our unique value proposition and selling value over price attitude and solution in front of the right decision makers and their buying committees (6, 10, could be 20+ people) who can make the recommendation and decision to BUY! So, vendors are having their sales teams escalate their efforts with social media, driving leads with account-based marketing (ABM) and customer-centric selling, and hiring more lead development reps (LDR’s), etc., all to capture their market share and facilitate more Pipeline velocity. Then where is the proof that things have changed and so must we?
Key findings, page 4. What’s the Future of Sales? Independent Research Commissioned by SAP. © 2014
Show Me the Money … 15% faster Pipeline
Trust Issues – present Products or Solution’s, financial value, helping prospects validate your offering creating trust with the financial buyer / decision maker.
Expectations – use business outcome sales intelligence to improve prospecting, meeting, presenting, and proposing, helping buyers know what to expect.
Greater Expectations – financial value differentiates proving you have done preparation aligning to your prospects corporate goals and initiatives and preparing you to exceed their expectations.
Frustration – financial value alleviates sales aggressiveness building confidence AND warming up executives to your offers.
The promise of improving your pipeline production and velocity by 15% is simple math. With a financial value sales engagement model, you get A) 15% more executive access, B) 15% more latent opportunities, and C) 15% faster deals.
Revenue AcceleratorsTM is the ONLY provider empowering Vendor Sales & Marketing teams to easily and more rapidly acquire high-performing opportunities from accessing and engaging Decision Makers and C-Suite. By defining the Vendors solution’s financial value, aligning it into Target Account objectives and business initiatives and using 1:1 ABM value messaging in SPEEDSHEETS; we transform Product to Value selling overnight for faster and easier selling. www.revenueaccelerators.com