Is Your Sales Team Living in the Past?

 Do you recognize the name, Tiffani Bova? Bova was an analyst at Gartner for several years and worked in the mid-market IT SMB community.

Two or three years later, she ended up in her role as a Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, where she is evangelizing change in the buyer’s journey. If you look at this quote from Bova, she says, “Today’s sales organizations must shift from trying to control their internally driven sales cycle and truly embrace the new customer-drive buying cycle--otherwise, prospects will eliminate you from their consideration list and buy from your competition.” 

In other words, you have egos feeding this whole process. You are talking about how you want to do it, and you are not listening to how your potential clients want to navigate their buying journey. Potential buyers are inevitably going to eliminate you because they can choose from other options.

Is Your Company Getting Found?

I can tell you without a doubt if there are topics, keywords, concepts, pain points, problems, and solutions your company addresses but you are not getting found in searches, these searches will become leads for your competitor.

These leads will be nurtured well through webinars, events, and open houses before eventually becoming a client--and all because they never knew your company existed because you did not have real estate anywhere near page one of a search engine.

If you do not want to put your company in this position, it is important to be realistic about what it takes to compete in a way that adds value to the buyer’s journey--rather than demands value.

Is Your Sales Team Living in the Past?

Legacy sales methods are overdue for a revamp.

Think about it; it is time for your sales efforts to match what marketing is doing. Without adapting to new methods, your company risks getting removed from the modern buyer’s equation.

Think about the modern buyer and your buyer personas when considering how you can evolve your sales efforts; take it up a few notches to meet or surpass their expectations.

Even companies with thousands of employees--where sales directors and sales teams should have well-supported buyer personas and support the modern buyer’s journey--have internal resources setting them up for failure by expecting them to sell like it is the 1990s. It’s bizarre, but it’s happening.

The good news for SMB businesses is they are nimble and able to address this cultural change. These companies can position themselves so they can pounce and disrupt companies much larger than them. 

Is your sales team living in the past, or do your sales methods mirror the modern buyer’s journey? Let us know in the Comments below.  

If you are ready to unveil your sales team’s potential, learn more about the modern buyer, and learn how to optimize each lead,  enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.