B2B Sales Strategy for IaaS, SaaS, and Fintech Post-Lockdown
Buyer expectations have changed. While changes in buyer behavior and digital transformation were already accelerating before the pandemic, the extended lockdown brought about a decade of digital transformation in a matter of months.
Tens of millions of people became more comfortable with virtual meetings and virtual social gatherings, researching and making purchase decisions 100% online that would've been unimaginable before the pandemic.
A lot of companies that historically held back on information on their websites were all of a sudden forced to become way more transparent out of necessity. This most definitely accelerates the need for sales professionals to be seen more as consultants and advisors, and less about repeating information that buyers can already self-discover on websites, review sites, and social media.
Most sales professionals should reposition themselves to have a doctor/patient-style relationship. The sales professionals diagnose the prospects' goals and challenges to determine whether their company's product/services fit before prescribing the recommended solution. A game-changing shift in context!
Sales pros are no longer the gatekeepers of information.
Search engines, crowdsourced reviews, and social media have won that battle.
As sales professionals maneuver out of isolation and hit the road again, they need to be much more selective about the kinds of prospects and customers they engage with -- so that they're always in a position to be seen as teachers and experts, more than just another salesperson peddling a commoditized product or service.
It's critical to get out of, and stay out of, the vendor box. Doing your homework -- investing in customer insight that gives you and your company an unfair competitive advantage -- is more important than ever. If this is all entirely new to you, read The Challenge Sale (Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon) as its lessons are even more critical post-pandemic.
The next generation of sales professionals will be way more comfortable using technology to anticipate and accelerate sales processes.
The new playbook includes complete comfort with using video conferencing as a way to educate and build trust faster, personalized videos as a way to explain and earn mindshare, smart social selling as a way to understand what's top of mind at both the prospect and the account level, and the enriched context in their CRM as mandatory for understanding what it takes to build a compelling story around all of the explicitly-shared data and similarly gathered behavioral data.
When I think about preparing for a meeting with a prospect or customer, my CRM's contact timeline tells a story of what it takes to nail relevancy with that particular person.
I can understand how they found our company, what topics (pages, offers, and emails) attracted their interest, what kinds of webinars they attended, how they interacted with my company at the webinar, what types of videos attracted their interest, and how other peers/stakeholders in the same company/account have interacted with my company.
Are you in B2B sales at an IaaS, SaaS, or Fintech company? How are your team's strategy and playbook changing? Let me know in the comments below.