BY Kathy Crosett
With B2B buyers not exactly welcoming sales reps into their offices these days, how can your sales reps make their numbers? Research shows that buyers continue to use content they find online as a way to pinpoint which vendors might have the solution they want to buy. But at some point, especially when considering the purchase of a highly technical solution, they engage with sales reps. Your sales reps, with the right coaching, can tip the balance in favor of a sale.
Why Buyers Choose A Specific Vendor
The latest research from DemandGen shows that 65% of surveyed buyers were happy with the messaging and content they received from reps during their recent B2B buying process. Specific details helped the successful vendors stand out from everyone else.
Vendors that were selected showed competence in the following areas:
- Knowledge of solution and business landscape 69%
- Knowledge of client company and needs 65%
- Timely response 54%
- Mix of content at each stage of decision-making process 52%
Buyer interest in the first two data points in the list above closely mirrors findings in our research on SMB buyers: 45% want to work with a salesperson who can provide ideas relevant to the buyer’s business and 59% do business with salespeople who know their products.
The B2B business sales funnel has been seriously disrupted. Over 80% of buyers are operating under changed conditions since the coronavirus started. The solutions they had anticipated buying at the start of the year may no longer be on the table. Your reps will need to spend more time than before tracking changes in the business landscape. They’ll need to come up with more creative ideas about how the solution they’re selling can apply to the business conditions being encountered prospects.
How Can Your Sales Reps Make Their Numbers?
With proper coaching, you can help your sales reps be more productive. In particular, they need to properly target prospects. Using an automated coaching solution, managers can help them identify the kind of targets who will benefit from what they’re selling, who the decision-makers are likely to be, and how to communicate with them.
This step, in the age of coronavirus, will likely go hand in hand with digital communications coaching. Because reps can’t network in person with prospects, they’ll need coaching on how to hone their social selling skills. Expert mining of social media data can help to fill the gap created by the lack of in person networking.
Similarly, writing the right kinds of email messages, often sweetened with the offer of content designed to address problems the prospect is facing, can go a long way toward securing that first appointment for a video chat or online demo.