5 Must-Know Changes in Sales
“Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.”
—Sir Richard Branson
Make it a practice to regularly look back at your thinking on the keys to sales success…reassess and course correct. Because when things change—and do they ever!—so too must your assumptions.
I do this as well.
Let me share with you five things I’ve changed my mind about regarding what top-ranked sellers and leaders must do (or not do) to keep thriving and prospering in today’s marketplace.
1. There is no “ideal buyer” anymore
This one’s a biggie. I even had a chunk of a chapter devoted to it in my earlier book, Non-Stop Sales Boom. Legacy sales training used to be unshakeable on this point: go to where your buyers are and stick with the best ones you find. It was true until it wasn’t. Today, think of your buyers moving in wolf packs—having a highly cooperative structure in pursuit of common goals. Sales research today tells us that there are an average 13 people in a buying group. And that 89% of all sales involve two or more departments/divisions within your customer’s organization. You must sell more broadly—not narrowly—to reach your packs.
2. The collaboration effect was underestimated.
Every new generation that joins the professional workforce brings with it their own way of doing things. Gen Z is no exception. It is intensely collaborative and those habits aren’t going away. On average, Gen Z members of your team consult with ten or more influencers, and engage with 2 or more departments for every purchase. Ignore those engrained habits and the influencers they follow at your peril. Even if they are not part of the formal decision-making structure on an org chart, they have plenty of pull.
3. You are the real marketer
Marketing isn’t someone else’s job to do. It’s yours. Long, long ago, I told teams that selling involved a tough but necessary daily grind in cranking out the emails and getting on the phone. Then things changed as the marketplace went digital. The cold part of cold calling became irrelevant. Buyers now only want to do business with sellers they see first—not the other way around. You achieve that by being a marketer: have a meaningful personal brand with a clear message premised on helping solve real problems that your customers have.
4. Your differentiated SALES approach is everything
Value-based selling remains important. But everyone does it now, such that it’s become commoditized in the marketplace. AI tools will give you a list of generic-sounding benefits for a given product in seconds. That’s not going to sway your customer. Authenticity, sincerity and deeper understanding of your customer based on research will. Deliver that insight skillfully and the differentiated experience you offer becomes rocket fuel. A recent study Richardson & Challenger says the sales experience you offer today is up to 9x more powerful in converting customers than a value-to-price ratio.
5. BEWARE OF BEST PRACTICES
Every best practice out there today ought to have a best-before-date attached to it. It used to be there were habits and methods and techniques to selling that were timeless, such that people just kept repeating them…even after they no longer worked. There’s even a fancy term for that cognitive bias: Semmelweis reflex. You must avoid hanging your hat on what seemed to work last year. Instead, relentlessly measure what you do and make micro adjustments.
Question everything in this marketplace and of what’s required to achieve success and stay there. As American physicist Richard Feynman remind us: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”