B2B sales strategies and trends

Navigating The New Sales Landscape

This has been an extraordinary time for anybody working in sales. Teams have had to find new ways of working, new ways of staying connected and new ways of navigating the sales process itself. We’re all learning at the same time: buyers, sellers and our sales leaders.

While the sales landscape may be very different, but our businesses, the economy and lots of people’s livelihoods will still depend on us to find ways to grow. As we contemplate the months ahead, sales organisations everywhere are starting to think about what these new approaches will look like.

At LinkedIn, we see ourselves as part of this learning process. Last week, Liam Halpin, Vice President Sales EMEA & LATAM Sales Solutions hosted a virtual sales leaders panel, to bring together the perspectives of different sales leaders, who are thinking long and hard about the new landscape and what a sustainable sales strategy now looks like. They’re not just concerned about getting though the present, but about the type of organisations we need to build for the medium and long-term future.

Making the transition from crisis mode to future-planning mode is something that’s top of mind for most of us at this moment. That’s why I wanted to share some of the insights and approaches that were discussed on the panel in this post. They fall into three main areas that we believe to represent the key dimensions of the types of sales strategies that will need to be built: empowering and motivating sales teams, strengthening crucial customer relationships – and finding appropriate, empathic ways to build an opportunity pipeline.

If you’d like to hear more, you can catch up on the full Live Leaders Panel on-demand, on our Sales Solutions Showcase Page.

 

Empowering and motivating teams in a sustainable way

We have seen that sales teams have adjusted to a massive amount of change in the last few months. For many sales leaders, the immediate focus has been filling the gaps left by no longer sharing an office, through video calls and virtual face-time. As we adjust to a new landscape though, we have heard that we’ll need a more nuanced approach to managing time. It won’t be just about replicating workplace interactions; it’s a case of designing a new culture that fits working from home, and which is both supportive and crucially, productive.

“If virtual working is the new normal, how can we make sure it’s sustainable?” asks Lisa Cowan, Director of Growth Strategy at EQGlobal, part of Equiniti. “We’ve been using video a lot to share how we are, sales teams are sharing more of their home life than ever, we’ve been doing a wonderful job in terms of wellness and fitness updates. However, the big upcoming challenge will be translating this into a sustainable way of working. I’m really interested in how we find the right balance between personal and professional going forward.”

Keeping sales teams productive and motivated has to involve recognising the changing shape of the sales funnel – and redeploying sellers to where they can make a difference. “Many offices are on voicemail, which means that our frontline phone team don’t have anyone they can call right now,” says Lisa. “But at the same time, we’re seeing an increase in inbound activity. It’s important for our paused sales teams to have a purpose, and so we’re bringing them in to help with those deals, which gives them new ways to contribute.”

“It’s really about leading with compassion and understanding the environment that we’re working in,” adds Steven Kang, LinkedIn Sales Solutions’ Director of Sales Strategy & Operations in EMEA and Latin America. “One of the most important contributions we can make is helping our sales teams to prioritise: thinking about how industries are impacted, listening to the challenges they face, and suggesting where they can direct their time differently.”

Lisa believes that the value of keeping teams motivated will be felt most strongly as businesses move into the next phase – and start looking towards the recovery. “We’re thinking about how to maximise activity when momentum builds once more,” she says. “We need to look at how we’ll be able to make a higher volume of calls when it’s possible. Part of that is looking at new sales techniques, and in particular experimenting with digital channels.”

 

Strengthening customer relationships:

With budgets at many businesses coming under pressure, strengthening existing customer relationships is critical. As Teleperformance Group’s Chief Global Development Officer Eric Dupuy explains, this will require innovative thinking on how communication works.

“As a business, we used to have a lot of face-to-face meetings and a lot of travel time,” says Eric. “Now we’ve been able to use that missing travel time to multiply the level of interaction we have with clients and prospects. As the situation matures, we’re finding that a lot of our contacts are actually more accessible – open to dialogue about what the crisis means for them and their business, and how we can help to build solutions. We’ve discovered just how much we can do through video – and that will change the way we manage things going forward.”

Teleperformance is seeing increased demand for outsourced customer experiences as businesses struggle to provide customer service in-house. In this situation, active listening and empathy have a key role to play in identifying potential opportunities. “When it comes to remote interaction, we try to combine high-touch with high-tech,” says Eric. “When we meet up for virtual coffees with clients and prospects, we try to order coffee to be delivered to the client at home. We’ve done the same with business lunches. Those simple human touches create moments of intimacy that are an opportunity to ask the right questions, listen and enable clients to open up about how we can support them.”

These types of conversations involve a subtly different balance of skills to those sellers may have depended on previously – and coaching has a vital role to play in helping them to adjust. “It’s not just a case of equipping people with good customer insight, but of coaching them on how to use that information and lead with empathy,” says Lisa Cowan. “It’s worth bearing in mind that just because a particular sector is thriving doesn’t mean that the individual you’re talking to is thriving personally. The current situation affects people in all kinds of different ways. You have to start with the person – bring your whole self to the call, and create a space for them to do the same.”

 

Customer acquisition and building the opportunity pipeline

Identifying new opportunities can feel like one of the most challenging aspect of sales at the moment. The sales leaders on our panel agree that agility is the key to meeting that challenge. They shared that sales organisations will need to shift resource and attention to areas of their businesses that are newly relevant – and they’ll need to adopt an iterative approach to planning, as a changing market landscape throws up new types of opportunities.

“We strongly believe that our competitive landscape will change after the crisis,” says Eric Dupuy. “We have to keep adjusting as the situation moves forward. “Early on in the situation we were providing guidance to our sales teams to focus on customer support. Now, we’re starting to think about the next topics that clients will want to discuss with us.”

Robust sales intelligence will be crucial when it comes to navigating this next phase. Each of the sales leaders that Liam spoke to, mentioned their teams making greater use of tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and being disciplined in how they update CRM systems. However, they believe there is also value in building structures that can pool insight from internal sources. “We’ve created these virtual, commercial war rooms where sales, marketing and support teams get together on weekly calls,” says Eric. “It’s an opportunity to share insight, monitor what’s happening in different regions, and make sure we’re ready to respond.”

 

It’s not just in the area of insight-sharing that the sales leaders anticipate the need for a closer relationship with other teams. “Smaller marketing budgets mean that the two teams are going to have to be more creative about demand generation,” says Lisa Cowan. “What role will the sales team play in getting the right messages out there and leveraging the value that marketing support can provide? I think, as in so many areas, necessity is going to be the mother of invention.”

Invention certainly feels like the right concept with which to approach the task of navigating the new sales landscape. We’ve already seen a great deal of innovation in the ways that sales organisations have tackled disruption and practical challenges. My instinct is that we’ll see an equal level of inventiveness when it comes to exploring a sustainable way forward for sales.

 

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