Written By: John Boyens | Sep 25, 2020 12:00:00 AM
By John Boyens, Co-Founder and President, Boyens Group and speaker at the 2020 Logistics Marketing & Sales Virtual Conference
Selling is now and will forever be different! Global pandemic, social unrest coupled with economic uncertainty and a presidential election makes it more difficult for salespeople to achieve their goals! As a result, if salespeople continue to sell the way they always have (Traditional Selling) they will fail!
To make sure you are successful selling in a Virtual World I recommend you become an entrepreneurial salesperson. This is more of a mindset change versus a skill set! It is all about ownership, engagement, and passion! Take ownership of your territory and/or book of business. Establish a territory strategy as a subset of the overall business strategy. Set aggressive growth goals and do whatever it takes to achieve them. Create milestones, trigger points and contingency plans to help you get back on track if you get off course. Leverage marketing, customer service, IT, finance, and product development as if they work for you.
Another key in entrepreneurial selling is the ability to tell powerful stories. Great salespeople know that stories, not presentations or marketing material, have a huge impact on how people feel, and stories can therefore pave the way to closing more business, more quickly. Storytelling in sales builds instant credibility for you, your company, and your solutions and when done correctly makes your client the hero!
In conclusion, I believe that B2B sales organizations will look vastly different post-pandemic. For 20+ years the number of outside sales professionals and number/quality of in-person sales calls have steadily declined. These trends have accelerated with better virtual sales tools and shifts in what is being sold over time (Cloud-based vs on-premise software solutions being a perfect example). All of this dramatically accelerated because of the pandemic and highlighted these trends as almost everyone has had to adapt to a virtual selling model. The work from home (WFH) environment we have been living in for the past four months will continue with businesses downsizing or in some cases eliminating brick and mortar locations. Businesses feel that productivity hasn’t been affected in the WFH environment, so they see WFH as tremendous cost savings!
To be clear, there are advantages in virtual, B2B selling:
If you found this blog post helpful and would like to read more please visit www.boyensuniversity.com.
And don't miss out on John Boyen's session "Virtual Sales - The New Normal" at the 2020 Logistics Marketing & Sales Virtual Conference & Expo Oct. 21-22 where he will go more in depth on how to sell in today's digital landscape. Learn More
Tags: Sales
