In 2022, we're challenging you to reconsider the way you're doing business to improve your sales performance.
The sales process is constantly changing and it's changing more rapidly than ever, yet there's a generation of salespeople still selling like it was any year before 2009.
Also in the mix are sales managers not adept to the evolving sales world, and therefore, might struggle to lead their team to good sales results.
Align Your Sales Strategy with Changing Times
Today’s best salespeople are constantly adapting and growing with each year’s changing marketplace and gaining an edge over their competitors.
They're growing.
At the same time, there are plenty of sales managers and salespeople just trying to finish their last ten years upright because they are standing in quicksand and seeing more losing than winning.
Here are some thought starters to help you align your sales strategy with the changing times.
1. Change The Way You Prospect
Gain some insight into your prospects' businesses and start writing about the solutions. Publish your content online and share it with people that you want to do business with.
Connecting with them after you have shared insights with them is an entirely different process than cold calling.
It works!
The days of dialing for dollars or delivering your elevator pitch after wandering into their business posing as a customer are over. They quit being productive a long time ago.
2. Learn and Leverage Technology
Specifically, get good at shared-screen appointments. They're obviously not just for presentations.
Shared-screen appointments are a great way to get the first appointment, share an insight, present capabilities, qualify potential solutions. They're not new anymore — they're expected.
Do you remember the first time you sent a fax by yourself? You can do it without help.
3. Mix It Up
Stop asking your tired “needs analysis” or “discovery” questions that you've been asking for twenty years.
We know why they haven’t changed.
They're questions asked to gain pre-determined answers. There's too much competition now for that to continue working. You need to be relevant from the start. You have the internet at your fingertips, and you can develop a stronger list of questions to draw out real needs in minutes, not hours.
4. Slow Down
Too many salespeople jump to the presentation at the exact same time that the prospect is just starting to think they are interested.
The result is… wait for it... no answer.
They like you. They're interested in you. But you didn’t take the time to work together with the prospect on HOW to best use you and your capabilities to make a difference for their business.
That is a first-class ticket to File 13.
5. Develop Your Resource Library
Take two weeks if you need and develop your case studies and referrals.
People don’t buy tennis shoes without reading reviews about them. If you don’t have your successes documented, you're asking for that first-class ticket to File 13.
They don’t say no. They just don’t ever buy.
6. Subscribe to a Blog
Listen to different ideas that you can use.
Make yourself read.
Read a blog about your craft and be a student thirsty for knowledge. Of course, we recommend The Center for Sales Strategy blog if you're looking for sales management and sales performance knowledge.
Other good sales blogs include Hubspot's Sales Blog and LinkedIn's Sales Blog.
You might have 20 years' worth of sales experience or one year of sales experience, but times are changing, and the sales process is evolving. Make the necessary changes to adapt to your customer and their needs to ensure you are improving your sales performance and results in the coming year!
*Editor's Note: This blog was originally published in 2018 and has since been updated.
