Back when I read the newspaper, I always enjoyed an Orlando Sentinel columnist’s first piece of the year in which he shared his beliefs with his readers. It sort of made us feel like we understood where he was coming from the rest of the year. I liked it so much that I wrote my first blog posts for two or three years in the same manner. I think it was 2013 – 2014-time frame. Not important enough to research because the point is that I stopped. No reason. I just forgot. I assume that’s when I stopped reading the paper, too.
So, as we move into 2023, I thought it would be cool for me to share our beliefs about business-to-business sales today. More specifically, negotiated business-to-business sales of complex services and products. Things that system integrators and their technology partners sell. We don’t have enough expertise in bid-spec work or residential sales, so we’ll stay clear of that world.
Vector Firm’s beliefs in 2023:
- For centuries, the market’s primary source of information was the salesperson. Every part of the sales process and every cool training technique followed this core component: customers needed salespeople for information. Not today. In today’s world, every customer has easy and free access to information on every topic imaginable. Customers no longer view salespeople as their source of information, and as an extension to that, they no longer feel like they need salespeople. This one change – a source of which can literally be held in your hand (and probably is right now) – has completely flipped the science of b2b selling.
- Prospecting is not dead, but the goal is different. No longer should the number one goal of prospecting be to schedule appointments. It’s too hard to reach people directly today. Remember, they don’t need you for information anymore. The primary goal today is to use prospecting techniques to teach customers, and ultimately be seen as a subject matter expert. Once they see you as a subject matter expert, they will contact you for information. However, they will not schedule time with a typical salesperson no matter how persistent or charismatic they are. Why would they? They have access to all the novice information they need.
- Attention spans are awful and getting worse. When salespeople arrive for appointments, every member of the audience is distracted. If they miss something that you say, they’ll just check the Internet later. Salespeople must engage their audiences before their meetings start and throughout the entire time. If not, they’ll be white noise behind the daydreaming.
- Showing up is important. No matter how many times someone says, “we’re getting along just fine doing virtual meetings”, they’re rationalizing this inferior way of doing business. Of course, there are several valuable benefits of virtual meetings, but get out there and see your customers. Shake their hands (or fist pump), see their body language, get to know them as people. No matter how common virtual meetings become, if all other things are equal, the one who shows up in person will always win.
- Salespeople have slipped into reactionary professionals in a race to deliver below-average solutions. Don’t get me wrong – I still believe salespeople are the hardest working people out there – but they’re working hard being fast to react. Because of technology and the assumed requirement to respond within seconds, creativity and deep-thinking have died. Done. No preparation. No strategic ideas. No amazing answers. Just “the best services in the industry”. Really? I’d prefer an amazing idea that makes me successful on Thursday instead of a crappy idea on Wednesday every single time.
- Great salespeople don’t sell things to their customers that are needed. They can buy those things on their own. Great salespeople sell their customers things they should be doing – things they don’t know about to solve problems before they happen. Great salespeople say things like “You don’t need us to do that for you. You’ve got the staff that can handle it, but should they? Should they be spending their time doing things that are outside their expertise?” Poor salespeople say things like “You don’t really need that. Your staff can probably do that. You just need this.” Poor salespeople save their customers pennies of cost but steal fortunes of opportunities from them.
- Hard work and persistence still matter … a lot.
I can go on about a million other things, but I don’t want to dilute these big ones. We have built Vector Firm upon these seven beliefs, which is why I made the decision a few years ago to attack these issues with an integrated three-prong approach of content marketing, sales training, and sales management consulting.
If you’re in line with these thoughts or not – as long as you have an opinion about the science of selling - I hope we get a chance to chat in 2023!
