The new Sales and Marketing era is here. Are you ready?🤔

It has never been more exciting to work in B2B sales as of now.  AND it has never been so hard as of today to succeed in B2B sales. So, we need to master new skills in order to become successful in the new era of sales and marketing.👀

Let's start with some stats...Did you know:

• By 2025 - 80 % of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Think B2C.
• 60 % of B2B sales organizations will transition from experience- and intuition-based selling to data-driven selling, merging their sales process, applications, data, and analytics into a single operational practice
• 44% of millennials prefer no sales rep interaction in a B2B purchase setting
• By using video in the sales process increase the chance of closing the deal by 227 %
• Only 24 % of Sales peoples mail are opened 
• 74 % of buyers choose the sales rep that first adds value and insight 

So many cool things are happening and changing in the B2B Sales & Marketing space right now. Or actually, it has for the last five years…from 2015, the Sales intelligence and Martech space has grown more than 4x times. 

If we think about it, it was not that many years ago. Then, prospecting was done all manually. We were looking for logos on the street, in newspapers, using google to find company’s names. Copy-paste company data from “Alla Bolag.” Calling from a long prospect list, it was all about the high activity to book as many meetings as possible. ICP what?! Trigger Event what? 

There was no BDR.s Demand Gen, Rev Ops, Sales Enablement, or something like that. No automation. No data flows. No AI to analyze sales calls. The CRM was pretty much only used to track the numbers of booked meetings, so you were not get yelled at because you had not reached your meeting booking goal for the week. No innovative E-signing tool. And absolute no focus on a data-driven approach.

Marketing was doing their thing, event, blog, and some campaigns - with no alignment at all. Marketing was (and unfortunately probably still in some companies) viewed as a cost center doing some fluffy things without precise measurements of the value. Today, in this digital world, marketing is king. And sales are queen. 

Thank goodness we know better today!

In this digital world, where sales and marketing need to be aligned, new technologies make us more intelligent and better in our daily work. In addition, the sales process and buying journey is racing from offline to online - we also need to upskill ourselves for the new Era. 

Thanks to covid, the digital transformation has gone much faster. But it is not only digital tools and tech that are driving this change. It’s also because of a new generation of C-level executives, and we need to start changing how we are making B2B sales. 

Millennials are the only generation that stills remembers the time BEFORE all tech but still is native in tech today. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are on the way, and to succeed as a sales rep; you need to handle new things as a sales rep and leader. 

The most exciting lately is “Digital Salesroom,” which I strongly believe in. 

Because... The future of sales is adaptive. The future of sales is the permanent transformation of organizations’ sales strategies, processes, and allocation of resources, moving from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric orientation. 

Also, it involves moving from analog sales processes to hyper automated, digital-first engagement with customers and brings together the following capabilities: 

1. Hyperautomation, e.g., implementation of complementary sets of tools that automate and augment business processes
2. Digital scalability, e.g., through new skills and digital tools, helps sellers become digital-first sellers and transform sales enablement practices
3. Artificial intelligence, e.g., shift from highly analog decision making to automated, algorithm-based decision making, helping align sales process, channels, and seller capabilities around customers

Increased digital skill sets in the sales organization CSOs can rapidly increase the ability of sellers to master the digital-first selling behaviors required to succeed today and in the future. Start by building two key capabilities: 

1. Virtual customer engagement. This includes presales call planning and preparation tactics and in-meeting practices for ensuring a productive and engaging dialogue with customers during virtual sales interactions. 

2. Virtual seller enablement. This includes actions for sales enablement in areas such as sales skills, training delivery, and onboarding to support sellers in a virtual sales environment and equip them to effectively sell in a remote setting.

Sales organizations will need to adjust their existing investments and reallocate resources among people, processes, and technology to support digital and virtual selling. And Digital Salesroom will be the next thing during 2022.

So...What do you think?

#Sales #trends #NewEra

Emma Wallin

Country Manager Norway