MAIN INSIGHT 31
Boaz Tal
DIRECTOR OF ENTERPRISE SALES
Is sales back to normal following the global pandemic?
It’s no secret that the pandemic has forced us to spend more time, both professionally and personally, in the digital world. Selling digitally is not easy, particularly if you have previously thrived in face-to-face sales environments before the pandemic. The last few years have brought on a rapid change in buyer behaviours. For smaller, typically utility focused purchases, businesses are now happy to conduct their own research and make a purchase without ever speaking to a sales representative. This expectation has also influenced decision making when it comes to larger, more consultative sales, such as enterprise SaaS. The accepted norm used to be that a salesperson would visit a prospect’s office for an initial presentation or consultation, regardless of the travel time required. As a salesperson, this gave you the opportunity to read a prospect’s body language and use a whiteboard to visually demonstrate any complexities in a simple, digestible way. Both hugely valuable tools that have now, for the most part at least, been taken away from the early stages of the buying journey. Combine this with the shorter attention spans brought on by the rise of short-form video content, and sales teams face a unique challenge. It is important for sales teams not to ignore this challenge, as if addressed correctly they can still thrive.
What does a modern sales team need to do in order to thrive?
The first thing to address is the shorter attention spans of buyers. It is more important than ever to be succinct, so say goodbye to your 100 slide sales decks! Meet buyer’s expectations by engaging with them in ways that they have become accustomed to. A short video explaining the benefits of your product or service goes a long way in justifying why a prospect should talk to you.
The second is to make sure that you really understand each prospect as an individual and don’t rely on marketing to spoon-feed you. Marketing can help sales teams to understand the industry as a whole - what are the common pain points, who are the big players - and provide relevant content to engage them initially, but understanding each prospect personally falls on the shoulders of the sales person. How do common industry problems vary by country or by specific niches within the industry? When a sales team can understand these nuances, they have a far stronger opportunity to build a human connection and win the sale.
Finally, make your offering real. This is particularly important in software sales. Instead of offering a demo, offer an interactive demo where the prospect can actually get hands on with the software and have a play themselves. This is your opportunity to influence their first experience with your offering and book valuable time together (this could be face-to-face or remotely) in return for giving them free reign to test the product how they see fit. This will build trust, authenticity and credibility - all vital components of converting a prospect into a customer.
Build trust, authenticity and credibility - all vital components of converting a prospect into a customer.
If you can convince the prospect of all the new opportunities that your service or product can bring without being compared back to pain points alongside proving ROI, then you are far more likely to win new business.
Is selling based on pain points still relevant?
Modern sales teams have been trained to sell based on pain points i.e. you have a problem, I have a solution. But what if the prospect doesn’t know that they have a problem? Before the rise of the iPad, did people walk around wishing they had a tablet as part of their everyday life? Of course not, it was a completely new concept. So when the iPad was released, Apple sold it on the premise of being a new opportunity that would magically transform lives. Modern sales teams can do this too. If you can convince the prospect of all the new opportunities that your service or product can bring without being compared back to pain points alongside proving ROI, then you are far more likely to win new business. To be clear, I’m not talking about consultative sales here, which is really selling on pain points but in disguise. Encourage a customer to imagine their life or business with your solution already working for them, and then offer to build that world together.
Xapien automates online research, using Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing, coupled with vast cloud compute resources. What used to take 7 days, now takes 7 minutes.
