The Future of B2B Selling – A podcast conversation with Tony Hughes

Do you want to get a sneak peek into the future of selling? Then you should continue reading to get some highlights from our podcast interview with the B2B sales expert Tony Hughes, who is a best-selling author, management consultant, keynote speaker and sales trainer. Tony has 35+ years of proven performance as an individual contributor, sales leader and CEO and he frequently speaks, writes, consults, and trains on B2B selling and sales leadership. In the following blog post you can expect to read about some future predictions regarding; what sales skills that will be needed, optimal sales outreach, as well as how B2B marketers' sales tech stacks can be developed going forward, and more. Keep reading to get some valuable sales insights! You can also listen to the full podcast interview with Tony here.   

What are the 3 problems leaders in the tech industry face today? 

1. There is not enough opportunity pipeline

Understanding the opportunity pipeline is an essential part of any opportunity management process. A common issue is not having enough leads to fill the top of your pipeline. To fill the top of the funnel, most businesses combine marketing efforts with cold calling/outreach. If your marketing team does a good job, your prospects will find your company through advertisements, promotional activities, public relations, and your website presence. If your messaging isn't connected with your target prospects, it's time to reassess.  

2. Struggling to manage complex opportunities to make sure you progress and win

Problems arise when salespeople get too overwhelmed when faced with complex opportunities. This complex opportunity can involve multiple teams and stakeholders, too short or too long timelines, strict budget and all other constraints. Managing a complex opportunity presents several challenges that are more sizable than those encountered in typical project management. When businesses engage in large-scale sales, maintaining a strong sales process becomes even more critical.  

3. Inability to retain and grow existing customers 

70% of businesses understand that retaining existing customers is less expensive than acquiring new ones. Nonetheless, 44% continue to prioritize customer acquisition. This emphasis on acquiring new customers is perfectly acceptable until existing customers begin to churn or prefer products and services from another company. These customers have become completely disengaged after weeks, months, or even years of neglect. Your sudden interest only emphasizes how much you've ignored them up until now when they have chosen the competition and are unlikely to return. 

Future of Selling: What changes can we see going forward? 

Sales automation technology is growing at an alarming rate and appears unstoppable. Over the last few decades, sales automation has greatly changed, giving rise to new ways of selling. As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in businesses, it has the possibility of being one of the most menacing opponents for salespeople. 

 The power and importance of the buyer's emotional experience when dealing with salespeople as they go through the buying process is undeniable in our modern sales world. Good salespeople must control their emotions before, during, and after the sale. They should be experts at recognizing the buyer's emotions, what is going on in the moment, and responding appropriately and effectively to the challenges they are confronted with. 

In recent years, new technologies have dramatically altered the sales sector and the jobs of salespeople. These technological advancements will only accelerate in the future. The end result will be a more efficient selling process and higher bottom lines, while salespeople's daily jobs will be simpler, more streamlined, and free of some repetitive tasks that normally take up a lot of their time.  

“Technology is going to act as a digital assistant” 

 

There is technology available that can detect trigger events within your ideal customer profile, and it can tell you who that person is. There are also sales intelligence tools, which provide us with the best channels of engagement. These sales intelligence tools can provide us with mobile phone numbers, and AI, for example, can monitor company websites, news sources, social networks, and other sources for events that may indicate that prospects are interested in purchasing. 

Technology makes selling much easier because you can easily select which people and companies to contact. Salespeople now have tools that can help them be more efficient. One example is a CRM software which uses objective parameters to prioritize leads, such as personal information, browsing activity on your website, or information scraped from social media. That's the huge benefit of technology: it not only makes salespeople's jobs easier, but it also allows them to accomplish things in a more satisfying and productive way. 

As a sales manager, how can one struggle through these changes and begin to break things down? 

If you're a CEO, sales manager, or sales leader, you should be aware that all selling is becoming inside selling. Inside sellers, those ISRs, SDRs, and BDRs, all those people executing their roles, are typically extending further into the buyer's journey and our sales cycle. Technology has allowed salespeople to be able to dig deeper into customer profiles and learn more about the type of people using their services and products. So, the salesperson's role has become more purpose-driven and more focused on customer knowledge. Sales people are now able to provide more discovery and qualification as the process progresses. We are also seeing more senior people executing in the field to really establish that final level of confidence and close the deal. As a result, inside sellers are increasing the value they provide.  

The big challenge for field salespeople and traditional account executives is how to figure out how do they provide the level of value that really funds them in their role. What we need to do is to consider what two machines do well, what we can do well and avoid wasting time doing things that machines could do.  

 

“Let’s not fall into the trap of spending lots of our time doing what machines could do” 

 

Technology should be used to assist sales, not hinder them. There are tools such as buyer intent software that enables businesses to gain insight into a customer's purchase intent by tracking customer journeys, predictive analytics, and competitor data. What they do is alert you to a potential sale opportunity.  

However, in an environment where it's all red ocean, your competitors are usually well aware of this already. This is where strategic selling enters. Strategic selling enables companies with a common language and process for pursuing sales opportunities, as well as monitoring for trigger events and creating the right conversation narrative. It assists sales teams in determining when to pursue deals and when to pass on those with a low chance of success. With the use of strategic selling, you will gain an advantage and be a step ahead of your competition. You should always act in the best interests of the client, but that's what strategic selling is. You should be opportunity creators rather than just responding to your customers.  

If you look at what humans do well; fun humor, storytelling, transferring belief, genuine empathy, managing politics, setting a vision for a brighter future, being genuinely curious and using our imagination - these are things you should be focusing on and let technology do the things that can be automated.  

What are the risks of automating sales processes?  

A lot of things can go wrong when you automate the wrong message to your customers. There is a bit of a paradox here because in order to automate and drive effective activity at scale, you must become proficient in the use of technology. Most people, however, automate bad messaging. 

You can also manage the sequences and send them out on a regular basis to drive outreach, and if you get some proof of life, you could use pixel tracking in your tech stack to see if the respondents opened the email. When they do, you reach out to them or follow up. The big risk, however, is if you build a tech stack and begin automating but end up burning through the contact list very quickly with almost no result. 

There are numerous risks associated with automation. Therefore, you must exercise extreme caution when automating. One way to overcome this is through segmentation. A segmentation tool can assist you in grouping your customers based on demographics, shared behavior, or other characteristics. These segments can then be used to trigger personalized campaigns and in-app messaging. 

You can run a predominant email campaign better if you segment a large list of accounts you're going after. There are only 3% of the market actively looking for what you can offer at any given time, but 40% - nearly half of the market - are willing to change if you can position your offerings to drive them improved results. To capture 40% of the market, we must develop messaging that does not appeal to people who are already in the buying cycle. When you appeal to people who are dissatisfied or frustrated with the results they are attempting to achieve, you are creating greater opportunities than when you only target the 3% of the market who are already willing to buy. 

What do you need in your tech stack? 

1. Customer Relationship Management tool

CRM enables salespeople to segment data and identify valuable opportunities through the use of criteria-based selections. This saves you hours of cutting and pasting from various documents or navigating through disorganized data lists.  

It's one thing to have a lot of data about your customers, but you also need to understand what that data means and how to use it. CRM also includes built-in analytic capabilities for contextualizing data and breaking it down into actionable items and easily understandable metrics. 

This provides all of the prospect information that sales professionals are searching for, and then stores that knowledge, as well as any new information prospects share over time as an individual or as a target account. Tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, designed specifically for sales professionals, combines LinkedIn's network data, relevant news sources, and your accounts, leads, and preferences to help you better connect with and build relationships with the buyers you need to engage. 

3. Sales Engagement Platform

This is a tool that you can use along your existing CRM system and that multiplies its impact by syncing and surfacing data, automating manual tasks, and measuring and tracking the results that matter. This demonstrates which cadences perform effectively, which salesperson are most effective at generating conversions, which days are best to contact prospects and customers, and much more; all of which can be used for mentoring or continuously updating as well as improving processes. 

Interested in learning more about Tony Hughes and his different projects? You can follow him onLinkedIn You can also listen to the full podcast episode in Podbean, Apple Music, and Spotify.  

Tony will also be one of our speakers at this year’s virtual event – B2B Tech Sales Summit. He will share with you his insights on how to “Transform Your Message and Elevate Engagement”. Don’t miss out and register now!