Over time, the strategies, and tactics we use tend to lose their effectiveness. This doesn’t mean that the older approaches were not right for their time. It does mean, however, that B2B sales organizations and their salespeople need to change how they sell today.
The longer a sales force goes without recognizing that their strategies are no longer helpful for their clients, the more they will struggle to win deals. This is especially true in pursuits where the salesperson competes with someone who uses an approach that creates greater value than outdated strategies and tactics.
Understanding the Need for Sales Transformation in Today's Market
There are many sales organizations using approaches that are close to 60 years old. Those approaches were effective in their time, but 60 years is a long time to pretend that nothing has changed. Maybe you've heard about the internet and how buyers can use it to acquire information about a company and their solution without consulting a salesperson. Exploring the adaptation of B2B sales strategies for modern markets is essential for organizations aiming to stay competitive.
Sales organizations that should know better still treat sales as a transaction. You know that a sales organization is outdated when their discovery meeting is designed to elicit a problem only for the purpose of pitching their solution. If you are still asking about problems, pain points, or gaps, you are likely not creating value for your contacts, who will feel bombarded by superficial questions that lead to a pitch.
The Critical Reasons Behind the Necessity of a Sales Transformation
When buyers and decision-makers have unaddressed concerns or need something more, sales organizations must change to address these buyers' needs. It is important to know that now buyers and decision-makers are having a difficult time finding the confidence and certainty they need to make the changes that will produce the outcomes they need to succeed. The importance of modernizing sales approaches cannot be overstated in today's rapidly evolving business landscape.
Identifying Key Areas for Change in B2B Sales Strategies
Depending on how long it has been since you changed your methodology, strategies, and tactics, pursuing a transformation can improve your sales results to varying degrees. Ultimately, an effective approach will allow you to create value for your clients in the sales conversation. When we talk about the idea of creating value for our prospective clients, we are suggesting that salespeople enable the contacts and their teams to make a rare decision, one they must get right on the first attempt. Updating sales methodologies to meet current market demands is a pivotal step toward achieving transformative success.
The Blueprint for Effective Sales Transformation: Modern Methodologies and Strategies
A modern sales approach doesn’t diminish the value of your solution, but it can help you understand how focusing too much on your solution can lead buyers to see you and your offerings as commodities. When every salesperson comes through the door with the same pitch, they become interchangeable. Now, the changes you must make to transform must find you using an insight-based approach that allows your sales force to lead their clients' change initiatives. You need not worry about leading the client, as they are seeking salespeople who are experts and authorities in their industry. Implementing insight-based sales approaches marks the cornerstone of modern sales strategies aimed at fostering genuine value creation.
The modern methodologies replace the legacy approaches, an approach you will recognize when a salesperson starts a conversation with their company, their clients, and their solutions. Instead, the modern sales approach starts with “why change.” There are many ways of opening the first meeting, including an executive briefing with insights and data that prove the salesperson is worth the client’s time.
Step-by-Step Guide: Executing a Successful Sales Transformation
If you want to test your current sales approach, you can explore the ideas in Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition and Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative. If how you sell is included in these books, you are in good shape. If you or your team seems far from this approach, it is time for a sales transformation. Following these steps for implementing a sales-strategy overhaul ensures a smooth transition to more effective practices.
The first step for sales leaders is to explore the companies that do more than simply provide B2B sales training and extend their work to methodologies that are right for this uncertain environment. You are looking for a company with a full complement of methodologies, strategies, and tactics that are easy to teach and execute.
Once you have chosen a company that does the work of transformation, the next step is to communicate to your sales managers and schedule a time to train them in the methodologies and strategies. By starting with your sales managers, you are preparing them to be able to help train their teams, as well as helping their salespeople to make the behavioral changes necessary for producing the better results you need from your sales transformation.
Once the sales managers are ready to help with the training, you are ready to start training and teaching your sales force with the new, more effective approaches that will become how they sell, but not only sell, but sell more effectively.
Reflections on the Journey of Sales Transformation: Time, Challenges, and Successes
- It takes time to transform your sales approach. You can expect your transformation to take as long as a year, but you will start seeing results soon after you have done the work above. The timeline for sales transformation success is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of sales teams committed to continuous improvement.
- You can expect your successful senior salespeople to drag their feet, especially if they are living on a few large clients, being more account manager than salesperson. You should corner them and tell them they have been chosen to help others make the necessary changes.
- Use your weekly team meetings to work on the transformation. Have each person describe what they did differently, how it worked or why they believe they failed. You want the salespeople helping educate the ones that are still working on mastering the strategies.
- If you want to accelerate your transformation, have your team role-play the talk tracks they need for the meetings they have with their clients and prospects. You never want your sales force to first say a talk track as their contact is hearing it.
- Start sharing success stories as your sales force starts winning at a higher rate than before the transformation. This will help others believe they can succeed and improve their win rate.
