Exploring the resurgence of outbound sales methods in the changing landscape of B2B sales, amidst the rise and fall of social selling and tech over-reliance.
More than a decade ago, I predicted that we would lose a decade. At that time, a bunch of charlatans convinced sales organizations and salespeople that outbound mediums were dead, and that social media and social selling would retire the cold call forever.
Several of us, including Jeb Blount, Mike Weinberg, and Mark Hunter, were criticized for suggesting that success in B2B sales would always require outbound strategies. We saved cold outreach by starting a conference called OutBound. At first, they laughed at us, but in less than 60 days, more than 400 people showed up in Atlanta, all there because they believed we were right.
Eventually, the social selling experts disappeared, but the damage had already been done. Don't get me wrong. There are some who are incredibly good at using social platforms to acquire meetings, but there are few of them, like Byrnne Tillman, Daniel Disney, and Carson Heady.
So, let's agree that the decade from 2010 was a lost decade when it comes to the state of B2B Sales. But the decade starting in 2020 has not been any better, and we can make a case that it has been even more unkind to sales organizations, salespeople, and B2B buyers.
The Evolution of Technology in B2B Sales
Over the last couple of decades, we have experienced a proliferation of technology companies and solutions. No matter where one turns, technology is being used, often with no real reason. If you eat in restaurants, you may have encountered a way to pay for your meal using a little computer that sits on the table. In the last year, every software you use likely incorporates Artificial Intelligence.
Technology companies have had an enormous impact on our lives, including B2B Sales, where we find people enthusiastic about technology and what it promised to do for B2B selling. The promise is efficiency, as technology companies believe humans should work like computer chips. At the same time, these same people suggest that salespeople should be more human, more empathetic.
It is difficult to find evidence of technology improving B2B Sales. Recently, one of the consulting firms suggested that the right amount of software in your sales stack is seven. This may help understand why salespeople spend less time with their prospective clients and more time using technology. Read that a second time. I ran out of technologies after the CRM and a data source. But then, the technology I was provided with was index cards, a phone book, and a phone.
What may be worse is that companies that are not SAAS companies have adopted their sales structure, hiring SDRs and BDRs and avoiding building full cycle salespeople, the kind that make the cold call, the discovery, and close the deal all by themselves. Unless the SDRs find a company that will give them a chance to sell, we will have many salespeople who have no experience outside of making cold calls and qualifying.
Rethinking Sales Leadership in Modern B2B Sales
Apparently, I missed a memo between the end of the first lost decade and this new lost decade. Most of us were taught that we were supposed to win deals. But it seems that now, winning is out of favor. Instead, the most important thing is an overly full pipeline of fake opportunities, outright lies, fictional deals, and companies that have had a first meeting without having a second meeting.
This ever-expanding increase in pipeline coverage has reached ludicrous speed, with sales leaders requiring salespeople to create 4x their quota. Let's set aside that there is no reason to create an opportunity without a plan to win the client's relationship and their business. So now we have something like a lottery, with each opportunity another chance of winning, causing sales organizations to fail to reach their goals.
The only way you reach your goals is by winning deals, not creating them. Many sales leaders get this backward. One would do well to first teach and train your sales force to convert before you scale up the number of opportunities.
Sales Leaders should focus their energy and their budget on increasing their sales team’s effectiveness, as that is the master key to achieving their sales goals. You want to see win rates rise every quarter as you develop, train, and coach your team.
Challenging the Status Quo: Addressing Misguided Sales Advice
You may not have noticed that the advice doled out is increasingly deranged, especially when it comes to cold outreach. One person trained GPT to “personalize” an email with evidence they found something about the person. He decided to teach it to others. Two weeks ago, a young person trained GPT to make 30,000 cold calls and book meetings on your calendar.
At about the same time, Google and Yahoo are going to give your domain the death penalty for as little as three spam complaints if 5,000 emails come through their servers. It’s already difficult to reach a client by phone, and these barbarians have destroyed the ability to send a client an email.
Still more, because the platform is open to all, a few people masquerade as experts, even while their profiles show no experience that would suggest they should be providing what is often bad advice.
Here we teach and train salespeople to win in an evolving sales landscape. If you care about B2B Sales and the future of the sales profession, you should push back on the worst practices. No one succeeds in sales without winning deals. If you are a salesperson, you want to master the sales conversation, as that is the variable that determines a win or a loss.
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