Sales trends

This Week’s Big Deal: Hallmarks of a Winning B2B Sales Approach

With the end of the football season coming up, it’s studying time. Fans, analysts, and executives from the other 30 NFL franchises are left to ponder: “What is it about the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs that propelled them to the Big Game? How can we adopt their best traits going forward in chasing the same goal?”

The Niners and Chiefs themselves carry traits and characteristics of successful teams that have come before them. The same is true in sales: The top performers are tuned into what worked in the past and what’s happening now. They’re receptive to embracing practices and principles that are driving results in a changing environment.

As a B2B sales pro, you can’t simply flip on SportsCenter to find a formula for success.  But you can tap into the wisdom and insight of fellow pros sharing their own blueprints.  

5 Hallmarks that Define the Most Effective B2B Sellers in 2020

As Anthony Iannarino wrote on his blog last week, B2B sellers face new challenges today. Buyers have more choices, and face greater financial responsibility and accountability than ever before. The drive for consensus on buying committees is transforming decision-making. 

How can modern sellers rise above and conquer these obstacles? Adopting the five hallmarks below, tailored to your team and organization, will put you in prime position.

Adopting a Growth Mindset

Not every football player can be a Patrick Mahomes. Kansas City’s quarterback possesses a physical skillset that is unparalleled in the league, and maybe even in the league’s history. But according to Jamie Crosbie, founder and CEO of Proactivate, selling isn’t all about skills.

In her LinkedIn writeup on How to Close More B2B Sales This Year, Crosbie asserts that mindset is more instrumental than skills in B2B selling success. Specifically, she advises that salespeople transition from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Here’s how she differentiates the two:

Fixed mindset:

  • Self-imposed limitations (usually unconscious) that hold them back from getting what they want.
  • Rigid mental patterns.
  • Believe they cannot overcome negative circumstances.

Growth mindset:

  • More likely to exhibit flexible thought patterns.
  • Curious about solutions.
  • Resilient in the face of mistakes or challenges.

“Invest in your sales success by raising your awareness about your mindset,” Crosbie says. “I won’t lie: the work isn’t easy. It requires you to be vulnerable. It requires you to dig deep into your own discomfort. But it’s some of the most valuable and important work you can do in your sales career. And it will carry over to other areas of your life to bring you great personal fulfillment as well.”

Not every salesperson is naturally gifted with a superstar skillset. But we can all control the way we think about and approach our jobs. 

Selling the Experience

The future of B2B sales is experience selling. This is the conclusion reached by Bob Thompson after reading a recent report from Deloitte about the transformed buying process. Thompson chatted with Deloitte’s Harry Datwani and shared some takeaways in an article at CustomerThink.

This isn’t new ground — we’ve been emphasizing the importance of customer experience in selling for some time — but Thompson’s piece is a good reminder and reinforcer. The sales world at large has been slow to make this shift because, according to Thompson and Datwani, many are still stuck in an outdated culture, chasing after quotas and numbers under frameworks that were developed during the industrial revolution.

“CEOs and sales leaders must recognize that B2B buyers are human beings, and they do care about the experience they get wrapped around the product,” argues Thompson.

His writeup includes some helpful visuals, along with practical pointers for making customer experience a centerpiece in your strategy, so it’s well worth checking out. 

Streamlining Goals

Goal-setting is a fixture in sales, and business in general. But a new article from Dorie Clark at Harvard Business Review cautions: Don’t Bog Yourself Down with Too Many Goals

“In the corporate world — and our culture more broadly — there’s always a push to do more, and do it quickly,” Clark acknowledges. “But by taking a step back to evaluate your goals and determine which is most important to focus on right now, you can make targeted, demonstrable progress that facilitates your long-term ambitions.”

She provides a four-step plan for streamlining and achieving your 2020 sales goals:

  1. Align your goal with the overall strategic vision for your company.
  2. Create a “goal timeline.”
  3. Identify a “keystone” goal.
  4. Force yourself to work towards the goal for a predetermined amount of time.

Tunnel vision is often (accurately) portrayed as a bad thing, but in some cases a laser-like focus — “willful myopia,” as Clark puts it — can be beneficial, helping salespeople cut out the static and pursue their highest priorities with greater determination.

Committing to Sales Coaching

Our recent roundup of tips from sales leaders on where to focus this year included plenty of on-point recommendations, including this one from Alice Heiman: “Commit to increasing the amount of time you spend coaching. In my opinion the goal is to spend 80% of your time coaching your team members to improve themselves as salespeople and to close more deals.”

There’s data to back up the value of this pivot. A new study from ValueSelling Associates found that 67% of companies with a multi-year sales coaching program experience high revenue growth

Whether it’s dedicating more time on a regular basis to one-on-one development, or building out a long-term strategy for coaching, a heightened commitment is bound to yield real benefits.

Shortening the Sales Cycle on LinkedIn

Decreasing the length of sales cycles is an ongoing objective for almost any sales team, because in doing so we can earn revenue faster, increase ROI, and tackle more opportunities. But rushing prospects through the process isn’t the answer; you end up sacrificing customer experience and failing to build lasting relationships.

How can sales pros aim to shorten the sales cycle without pressuring prospects? Last week we offered some guidance on leveraging LinkedIn toward this end, noting that one company cut its average close-time almost in half through smart tactics on the platform. 

At a high level, we suggest that sales teams do three things to accelerate deals: 

  • Be More Selective with Lead Gen Criteria. In many cases, prospective deals stall out because the rep is trying to push a square peg into a round hole with an account that simply isn’t a fit. Align search criteria in Sales Navigator closely with your ideal customer profile, and don’t settle for longshots.
  • Don’t Settle for Substandard Sales Outreach Timing. Engaging the right prospect at the wrong time is a costly but all-too-common misstep. That initial connection and burst of momentum is so key. Take the time to research a resonant angle, or save your leads in Sales Navigator and wait for a timing trigger to reach out with relevance. 
  • Make it Easy to Engage with You and Your Content. This ties back to the customer experience. Scrutinize the way you’re communicating with and delivering content to buyers. They tend to want frictionless access to what they need, available on-demand. 

Perfect Your B2B Sales Game Plan for This Year

Both teams set to compete next weekend were built from bits and pieces of champions that came before them. In the NFL, just as in sales, evolution is about adapting, iterating, and improving upon what works.

This year, the standout opportunities for B2B selling include shifting to a growth mindset, emphasizing customer experience, refinement of goal-setting, recommitting to sales coaching, and maximizing the value of LinkedIn. 

Don’t take it from us; take it from peers who have already won.

 

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