By Garrett Sheridan and Donncha Carroll
Forrester has reported that “although it varies greatly with product complexity and market maturity, today’s (B2B) buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90% of the way through their journey before they reach out to the vendor. For many product categories, buyers now put off talking with salespeople until they are ready for price quotes.”This trend has some people asking, “Are salespeople still relevant?” We think the answer is unequivocally “yes.” But we are equally convinced that the roles and capabilities within the salesforce must keep pace with the changing behaviors of B2B buyers.The three most important shifts sales leaders and their sales teams should make to remain relevant:
Conclusion
The result of these changes is that many companies are rethinking how they define the different sales roles and specifically how different types of roles should interact with each other across the sales process, all the way from lead generation to qualification to solution definition and closing the deal. Almost 2 million sales and related positions will be added to the U.S. workforce by 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If your company is part of that trend, clarity about various sales roles and capabilities is essential. In the article “Attract, Deploy and Retain the Right Sales Talent Through Partnerships,” we outline five concrete steps companies can take to build a sales force that can succeed in this changing world.