This topic has been debated for decades whether a sales professional is better to be a generalist or a specialist. There is some consensus amongst the voices that agree that in smaller organizations that sell in the B2B world, a generalist makes sense. In these smaller organizations, the sales professionals have to service many types of customers and prospects and thus, become a jack of all trades. But how much longer will this model last?
Research is clear and in the new era of selling B2B, 55% to 65% of the buying decision is made before a customer or prospect has engaged you as a sales professional. At this point, they have reviewed your organizations product set, looked at online reviews, and asked around about your reputation. This change is an issue for those sales professionals that are still stuck in the old ways of business development and value creation. Today’s decision-makers are tiring of the sales professionals that call on them just to ask them questions that they should already know. I have seen this evolve over the last 20 years in that today’s decision makers are more sophisticated and informed and have don’t feel like they should have to start from the beginning and “educate” a sales person about their business.
If a sales professional’s strategy is to engage with a prospect and solely try to get an initial appointment to learn about their prospective customers business, they will become less relevant in the prospects mind. Not that understanding their prospect and customers business is not important, but it makes for an ineffective business development strategy. Sales professionals have to get uncomfortable to develop deep industry knowledge and that process can take time.
The biggest issue today is that sales professionals are using old outdated techniques such as features and benefits or fall into the trap of trying to look like a consultant by asking their prospects, “what keeps you up at night?” LinkedIn completed a survey of 1,500 B2B purchasers/ influencers and noted that 89% of buyers turn away from sales professionals if they cannot provide key insights into their business.
To differentiate yourself from your competition you have to become more specialized and play in fewer sandboxes. Over the last two decades, decision-makers want key insights into their business and want sales professional that have invested the time to go past the standard elevator pitch. In the new era of selling to B2B, sales professionals that spend time learning trends, issues, and key indicators for the industry they sell into, will separate themselves from their competition and not have to compete on price.
Most sales organizations are slow to adopt a real strategy to facilitate this learning. Those organizations like to think that they are worth an extra percent or two and that they are a real value add for the service they provide. This issue is that just saying you have great customers service and speed to market might get you in the door today in business development, but will not be the differentiator. Organizations from the top down must commit to being a learning organization and having an environment where customer and industry knowledge is celebrated and rewarded.
If you only talk about numbers with your team, they will feel like a number. Talk to your people about ways to deliver value to your customers and they will connect with your organization like never before.
Gallup revealed in How Millennials Want to Work and Live, that 59% ranked the ability to develop and grow a priority when working for an organization.
Think about creating an environment where learning and adding value are the priority. Imagine a Monday morning sales meeting that the Sales leader opens up with listening to a 12-minute podcast that features an expert in the industry that their team sells into. Then, over the next 15 minutes, they spend time as a team talking about how they can share this insightful information with their key customers and prospects. Think about the excitement of the team as now they have real reasons to call and set appointments to deliver value to their customers and prospects rather than just product pushing calls. In addition, it gives the sales professional confidence and increases employee morale and retention. They feel like they are doing something meaningful.
This simple idea of sharing a podcast helps to facilitate a culture of learning and growing within the organization, rather than the traditional sales meeting of what have you done, what are you going to do, and who are you going to visit to accomplish that. There are thousands of ideas like this that can help to separate sales professionals from their competition and be increasingly relevant to their customers and prospects. Fill your mind with new information that you can deliver in the form of value and make it so good, your prospects would pay for the conversation!!
