Most executive-level decision makers are adept at repelling salespeople. In fact, as keepers of the budget and the preferred target of sellers in general, it's a skill born of necessity. So it’s only slightly more surprising that one out of every three salespeople still arrive ill-prepared for meetings, often lack a real understanding of their customer's business, and can demonstrate little value as potential suppliers.
But there are exceptions.
In fact, a select group of salespeople have no trouble at all connecting with decision makers. These salespeople run meetings differently. They know their customers' business, arrive prepared with actionable insights and ideas, and address the business challenges that matter most to management. They not only sell differently, but they're also supported differently.
It used to be that knowing whom to call was the key to a rep’s success. But LinkedIn, customer relationship management systems, and other technologies now make getting that information easy. The challenge is making sure reps have the messages that resonate, and the skill to know how and when to apply them. Essentially, when they do get face time with decision makers, they must be prepared to add value.
Because most of today’s buyers are well down the procurement path before they engage with salespeople, reps need to come into B2B sales cycles with a point of view designed to educate and engage the customer. Without it, reps aren’t going to have buyers’ attention for very long.
The bottom line? Reps may not need to sell differently, but they do need to be experts at what they sell.
As sales development professionals, how do we confront this challenge? Are you confident that your reps are able to grow and protect your business the way you need them to? At the ATD 2016 International Conference & Exposition, panelists from Xerox, Kony, and Medtronic will examine how high-performing organizations are preparing their sales teams to meet the demands of today’s buyers.
In the case of one Xerox customer, they had so many solution providers trying to sell to them, they were actually charging $1,500 for a sales presentation. After all, their time is money. “As you can imagine, the quality of that presentation went through the roof. Every salesperson should approach every call that way,” says Doug Bushee, head of worldwide sales learning at Xerox. “As a result, our reps are well prepared to make the most of that coveted time with the client.”
In an ideal world, we’d simply increase our investments to address these needs. Yet as sales training professionals, we must be stewards of every dollar, looking for new and innovative ways to ensure that sales reps are ready to add value, with everything from knowledge reinforcement strategies to persona-based content libraries. Only by measuring the business outcomes of these things, however, can you focus on the ones that are delivering results.
Bushee adds, “We’re Xerox, we’ve been selling forever, and solicit customer feedback religiously through surveys and other tools. When we introduced whiteboarding skills, for example, it was one thing where customers said we really hit a home run. So we get feedback from the customer and then fine-tune our approach based on that feedback.”
