Sales has been around since we started bartering as cavemen. Evolving progressively over the centuries and decades, the pace of change in the B2B selling world has gained a lot of momentum in the last decade. With the advent of the new informed buyer, the buying landscape has also changed significantly. What the buyer expects from the salesperson now is a lot different from earlier. Additionally, the emergent circumstances of Covid-19, known as the new normal, are forcing companies to look at restructuring and re-skilling their sales force to build resilience and make them successful in that new normal era.

Let us first look at some of the changes in B2B buyer behavior which is impacting the way B2B sales is evolving:

• Today’s buyers are well-informed. A tsunami of information is available at their fingertips even before they interact with salespersons. The expectations that customers have from salespersons now has evolved as someone who can seek and provide useful information which will help the customer to make their purchase decision.
• They have become more demanding and are looking for customized solutions. They will not mind spending that extra dollar to get what they are looking for. A recent research* shows that 80% of B2B buyers expect companies to interact with them on real time. Unlike earlier, they are involving specialist procurement teams to evaluate vendors and offers, making the decision-making process more complicated with multiple stakeholders with their individual interests and influencing power.
• Clients are increasingly influenced by the information they get on social media. In fact, this works both ways as clients are also able to influence more by providing information concerning products and brands – a function that used to be the sole responsibility of businesses a decade ago.
• Commoditization of industries has made customer experience the differentiating factor. 85% of B2B marketers agree that consistency across content, teams, and channels is the backbone of an effective customer experience and 65% of business buyers will switch without personalized interactions.
• Almost,the entire buying process is happening on virtual/remote mode. In fact, with the current Covid -19 pandemic, in some product categories, it has now become 100% virtual and there is no F2F meeting between the buyer and the salesperson at all. This means that building trust and giving that personal touch is so much more difficult now.

Given the above scenario, let us look at what it takes for the salesperson to be successful in today’s environment; in the below 2 categories:

1. Skills and competencies which were required earlier but are now gaining importance:

• Personal Branding – the ability to build and nurture a personal brand that portrays expertise. This is a differentiating point and critical for adding value, especially in luxury selling. It would include leveraging social networks to strengthen one’s brand.
• Rapport Building – This skill is central to the entire customer experience and more so because of the post-Covid 19 situation where rapport-building has to be done remotely. 73% of customers say companies’ trustworthiness matters more than it did a year ago.
• Influencing – Today’s salesperson communicates and behaves more like a consultant. They speak with gravitas and are more equal in every way to the buyer. The skill of influencing adds that cutting edge that makes a salesperson’s offer irresistible to the customer.
• Value Creation – The professional salesperson understands that value is created through the entire sales cycle starting from the first touchpoint to every single interaction and communication whether through email, phone or face-to-face meeting.
• Persuasive Story-telling – Buyers don’t want to hear about your product or service. Good salespeople know this and weave the product or service they’re selling into the larger story that bends and blends with the customer receiving what they want (which is usually not your product, but a key benefit).

2. Competencies which need to be developed and adapted to match the demands of resilience under the new normal:

• Digital Proficiency – the ability to leverage digital tools and platforms over a variety of digital devices as well as sales force automation and marketing automation to generate results.
• Prospecting and Referral Generation – In the phygital age (i.e. physical + digital), the ability to generate leads as well as referrals through quality social connections and getting warm introductions and, attracting a growing volume of the right relationships. To enable organizations and sales professionals build resilience, Growthsqapes is creating new and exciting offerings in the space of social network selling.
• Providing Insight –the ability to create new demand by proactively bringing new insights to target prospects. Salespeople should be able to do big-picture thinking and evaluate alternate scenarios to bring out value in their proposition.
• Buyer Process Map (BPM) Recognition–salespeople should understand that there are multiple buyer process maps and have the ability to recognize where the buyer is in the buyer journey.
• Sales Process Execution – the ability to sell the way the buyer wants to buy. The sales process execution should be dynamic and in sync with the BPM to increase the conversion ratio.

Successful capability development of a B2B salesperson depends on nurturing and embedding the above skills and behavior elements in the personality of the salesperson. For customized interventions to develop the sales competencies in the new normal feel free to contact Growthsqapes.

*independent research done by author

This blog has been written by Mr Sandip Mitra, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.