Significant shifts in B2B buying will dramatically change B2B commerce over the next five years.
Instead, sales leaders must evolve their mindset from leading teams of individual sellers to leading the far broader effort of organizational team selling, embracing digital routes to market above all else.
Article concepts contributed to: Gartner Inc.: Gartner Sales
Full Article: 5 Ways the Future of B2B Buying Will Rewrite the Rules of Effective Selling
A brief review of the top five customer buying trends will demonstrate why and examine the implications for sales leaders and their strategies. The story of evolving buying dynamics has two independent but parallel themes, digital and difficulty, each with dramatic implications for sales organizations.
Digitally enabled customers, facing dramatically more difficult considerations, are mismatched with today’s sales model, which spectacularly underserves customer’s most critical need: confidence in making the best business decisions possible.
Digital Trend 1: B2B customers radically discount the perceived value of sellers
Digital Trend 2: Customers reward rich digital buying experiences
As B2B buying increasingly moves online, both the substance and the scope of seller behavior will have to adapt in order to stay relevant, focusing increasingly on Sense Making and Change Enablement.
Meanwhile, sales leaders will have to substantially rethink their role. Too many sales leaders today perceive themselves to be the leader of sellers rather than the leaders of selling. Undoubtedly, customers are migrating decisively from in-person channels to digital alternatives. Sales leaders must not cede their deep expertise in sales effectiveness to functions more classically owning these digital channels. Instead, websites and new digital channels must be purpose-built to drive sales performance, justified by a simple truth: customers learn and buy digitally.
Ultimately, sales is about selling. Irrespective of whether the role of human involvement in sales decreases over time, selling must still happen one way or another; the channel (human versus digital) is merely the means, not the end.
No question, the future of sales is different. Change is coming to the function, change in which heads of sales are takers, not makers. But that doesn’t mean leaders can’t adapt in response, and the best ones have already begun.