In the Digital First Sales Operations training session, we expose a very costly misalignment. Not the traditional misalignment between Sales and Marketing, but a more damaging misalignment between Sales and the market…
You see, commercial buying behaviors and preferences have been changing dramatically over the past decade or so. And when the pandemic came along, these dynamics were all kicked into high gear.
Commercial buyers now expect to be able to conduct the bulk of their research on their own. They expect to be able to access most of the information they need to make a decision, unfettered and on demand. They want to avoid as many phone calls and meetings as possible, and only engage with salespeople much later in the process…when and if they actually need expertise or reassurance.
Meanwhile, too many sales operations are still structured, managed, and measured as though it’s late 2012 and we’re all waiting to see whether the Mayans were right about the world coming to an end.
The traditional sales process is usually built around the salesperson. The rep identifies a prospect, initiates contact, asks discovery questions, shares information, delivers a presentation, conducts a demonstration, follows up repeatedly, and tries to move the buyer through a series of predefined stages.
This type of process certainly makes sense from the seller’s perspective. It gives managers something orderly to scrutinize, gives Sales Ops something defined to build into the CRM, and produces plenty of measurable activities that can be numerated on a reporting dashboard.
The only problem with this rep-centric process is that it bears little or no resemblance to how many customers actually prefer to buy these days.
Today, many commercial buyers are starting the process long before a salesperson even knows they exist. They’ll research the problem, evaluate different approaches, compare providers, watch videos, read case studies, ask colleagues, consult online communities, chat with AI’s, and quietly narrow the field. By the time they speak with a sales rep, they’ve already developed strong opinions about what they need, who can best provide it, and which vendors they should probably disqualify.
This disconnect creates all kinds of questionable behavior…
We gate information buyers think should be freely accessible. We push for meetings and calls that buyers would rather not have. We require reps to perform discovery work the customer has already completed. We celebrate activity levels without asking whether any of those activities actually made the buyers’ decision-making process any better, faster, or easier.
Then we wonder why so many buyers go dark on us.
Don’t get me wrong…buyers still value human expertise. They just value it later in the process and at a higher level. They don’t need someone to read the website to them or deliver a generic capabilities script. But they might need someone who can help them evaluate tradeoffs, challenge their assumptions, navigate internal complexity, and reduce the personal risk of making a bad decision.
All that requires a different kind of sales process.
Sales Ops should begin by mapping the journey buyers actually prefer rather than merely documenting what reps or managers want to do. How do buyers want to learn? What information do they need at each stage? What can they accomplish independently? Where are they most likely to become confused, uncertain, or stuck? And where does expert human involvement genuinely add value?
And then, the various processes, systems, content, roles, and measures can all be architected to facilitate that journey.
As we discuss in the Digital First session, this buyer-centric approach will likely involve expanding the definition of the sales cycle to include more top-of-the-funnel marketing activity. It will likely mean treating website content, webinars, case studies, email sequences, and self-service demo videos as essential sales infrastructure rather than decorative marketing fluff.
And it may also mean augmenting…or even replacing…some traditional sales activity metrics with measures of buy-side engagement depth, content utilization, digital passalong, and internal decision-making progress.
The bottom line is that commercial buying behaviors and preferences are very different now…and our sales processes need to catch up.
Digital First Sales Operations
Digital interactions aren’t just part of the sales process; they are now the bulk of the sales process. But enabling our teams in a digital-first world requires much more than adding a few new tools.
Sales Process Improvement
In this session, we share how to identify bottlenecks, develop procedures, and prioritize improvements. And, we discuss how to leverage technology to streamline and scale your sales processes.
Building a Better Sales Pipeline
How do we develop a more efficient and more effective sales pipeline? And how do we drive improvement in a way that is more consistent, predictable, and scalable?
