Have We Seen the Last Changes to Professional Selling?

Just how much has selling changed in the last five years?  Everyone has their own opinion but I would say, “A lot!” Consider the following events, tools and conditions that are in effect today but not as recently as five years ago:

• The recent economic crisis changed the way that businesses and consumers spend money.  We were embarrassed into controlling our discretionary spending, conducting more due diligence, and being more price-conscious.  The result?  There is considerably more resistance to what is being sold while there is significantly less money available to spend.
• The internet has made information, once only available from salespeople, accessible to everyone with an internet connect or phone.  The result?  Salespeople are being invited in to the buying process much later, are expected to present and propose, and then wind up chasing the business.  There are remedies for this but they aren’t simple to learn and salespeople aren’t able to put them into practice without training and coaching help.
• Prospects don’t answer their phones or return calls anymore.  Rude is the new “call me!”  Result?  It’s more difficult than ever for salespeople to connect by phone, even when following up on in-bound leads.

That’s all of the bad news.  But there is good news to compensate for some of this:

1. Social tools, like LinkedIn, make it easier than ever to be proactive about getting introduced to new opportunities.  Our clients use LinkedIn in several ways:
   1. Exploring who their contacts know and asking for introductions to people who fit their target audience;
   1. Reaching out directly to 2^nd and 3^rd level contacts, referencing the 1^st level contact they have in common;
   1. Joining groups where their target audience hangs out, answering questions and contacting people who have issues with which they can help;
   1. Reaching out to members that have recently viewed their profiles and asking why;
   1. Congratulating 1^st level contacts that have updated their profiles, changed jobs and/or changed companies, and to learn about new opportunities for doing business together;
   1. Asking questions as a way to gain visibility and get other people who might have problems similar to the one posted to identify themselves;
   1. Pushing news out to their network to remain visible;
   1. Posting links to their articles, blogs, events, and offerings to generate leads.
2. Sales tools, like reachable.com, show you how to get introduced to people you don’t know.  Let’s say you have something that could appeal to Tim Cook at Apple but you don’t have an introduction to him.  From inside Reachable, you enter your name and Tim’s name, and Reachable will instantly render a visual map of your network, showing people in your network that are between you and Tim, as well as the best route to take to get introduced.
3. Lead generating and nurturing tools, like Hubspot.com, make it easier to generate quality leads for your increasing number of offers and landing pages.  We use Hubspot in our own company, and as a result of their blogging platform, rich suite of analytical tools and user friendly interface, our landing pages and offers, our incoming leads have increased one hundred times over, going from 15 to around 500 leads per quarter.
4. Blogging makes it easier to differentiate yourself and allow people to find you.  My own Blog has more than 800 articles so it becomes more and more likely, with each passing day, that one of my articles will turn up in somebody’s Google search, if it has anything to do with finding answers or expertise in the area of sales or the sales force.
5. CRM tools like Landslide and Salesforce.com make it easier to memorialize, track and stay on top of opportunities in the sales pipeline.  Salespeople using tools like these stay true to their sales process – the tool requires it – enter better notes into the system, have much greater success with follow up, and management has a dashboard that provides real-time statistics on the pipeline, its balance, movement and forecast.  The reports based on that information make great statistically accurate fodder for coaching and accountability.
6. Email marketing tools, like Constant Contact make it easier for you to get your message to the people sitting in your database.  Whether it’s a weekly newsletter to prospects or a weekly update to customers, tools like this make it easy to keep your name top of mind.
7. Video hosting sites, like Wistia, allow you to manage your videos, embed compelling messages on your web sites and in your emails so you can more effectively and efficiently tell your story.  We send links to prospective clients so that they can view short but powerful and professional video clips to either get them engaged or pique their interest.
8. Content tracking sites, like Visible Gain, allow you to measure prospect engagement, by creating personal pages for your prospects and instead of attaching files to your emails, you send them a link to the personal page you created for them.  You see what they view, when they view it and how often they return to it.  Clients who send out PDF brochures, samples, proposals, slides, and spreadsheets often never knew whether prospects received those emails, read them, opened the attachments, or returned to them.  With an application like this clients know exactly how engaged, interested and serious their prospects are.
9. There are many more awesome tools available to savvy companies and sales forces and I don’t have the space to talk about them here.

Has the change peaked and can we get back to selling?

Unfortunately, there is more change to come.  The biggest change in the works is the great migration to inside sales.  It’s far more efficient and significantly less costly to have an inside sales force rather than an outside sales force.  However, it’s not that simple.  Some customers, some businesses, and some models need to see their salespeople on a very frequent basis.  For others, being inside means they can reach 10 customers each day instead of two.  For most companies, the big challenge then, is not only whether to make this move, but to what degree, and over what period of time.  Even more important is what happens to the outside salesperson that is “moved” inside.  Should that remote, outside field salesperson be replaced with a local, inside salesperson, should that person simply work from their in-home office, or is that person relocated?  These are major decisions with potentially huge financial and personnel implications.

Recently, there has been a huge decline in the availability of good sales talent.  There are still plenty of salespeople looking for work but most of them aren’t very strong.  New strategies and tools for finding, attracting, interviewing, selecting, hiring and on boarding have become necessary just to fill existing openings, before new positions can be filled.