So, what’s the road ahead, when business improves rapidly on the back of steady progress in vaccination and calibrated opening up? What new sales skills would the post pandemic world call for? These snippets excerpted from Supertrends, published by ProSales (Now Mercuri International Research) take a close look at the sales-skill dashboard:
Value of information with salesperson has shrunk dramatically – “… with the rise of the Internet …. the value of information (available with salespeople) simply shrank when Customers could access it on their own via digital channels, such as comparison sites, guidelines, do-it-yourself articles, reviews, product videos, and real-time help from their networks via social media. The market research company Forrester has demonstrated in one of its studies that 74 percent of B2B buyers perform half of their research on their own on the Internet before they contact a sales rep or make a purchasing decision. The same study also showed that 90 percent of all purchases begin with an Internet search”
Traditional, transactional sales logic is no longer relevant – “If Customer purchases are routine, the sales rep’s role becomes less and less important and the Customer can just as well perform the purchase on her own. This is a transactional sales logic, where the sales rep is partially or entirely replaced by digital marketing and sales via e-commerce platforms. This traditional sales logic is being nibbled away at the edges at an increasing pace, by automated transactional sales.”
Complex sales logic pitchforks you into an advisory role but calls for new skills – “However, if the Customers’ needs are complex, different or tailored in character, the Customer’s need of qualified advice increases. Here, the sales representative fills an ever-larger role and her task is shifted from being an information provider to adding value – beyond the actual offer. The sales rep becomes thereby, by definition, more of a consultant, advisor and business developer, tasked with differentiating its services by adapting and creating unique values for its clients with those types of needs. This type of emerging logic is defined as complex sales logic.”
The middle segment too is rapidly losing ground – “The lukewarm middle segment where traditional sales logic existed is increasingly experienced as less value-generating, uninspiring and without direction, and is thereby a dangerous path to follow”
Reflection Questions: (1) What do your typical sale transactions look like? Are they transactional sales or complex sales? Or something in between? (2) How much of your selling activity has become virtual now? What percentage will stay that way? (3) What is your comfort with virtual selling? (4) What additional skills do you need to meet the demands of the post pandemic sales template?
A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.
– Andrew Grove –
