Reason One:
Complex Sales is Hard and Getting Harder
No matter how much experience your sales reps have, mastering the complex sale is hard because there are a lot of moving parts and none of them are in your sales rep’s direct control; and unfortunately, it’s getting harder.
Today’s sales reps have to navigate worldwide economic uncertainty, revolutionary and landscape-changing technologies like AI, and a shifting of buying decision and influence from IT to line-of-business.
Sales reps are faced with a level of complexity like never before.
- =Increased buyer risk aversion, decision consensus, and stakeholders - including third-party consultants.
- =Tighter budgets and board-level approval requirements for major purchases.
- =Technology-driven new solutions, new and different competitors, and new customer profit & expense models.
- =Misguided expectations from internet-savvy buyers, including vastly accelerated customer timeframe expectations.
- =New LOB influencers and buyers who often don’t entirely understand the complexity of the solutions they are buying.
Even the most accomplished sales reps can lose their way in deals that involve multiple complex new solutions, many new buyers and influencers, and long, complicated purchasing cycles.
It’s important to help your sales reps – even the experienced ones – simplify the complexity. Regardless of the shifts adding complexity, the fundamentals of selling remain the same.
Whether the shifts introduce more or different stakeholders, or require more work on memorable value propositions, or doing deeper account research, or changing who you target with a business case, the fundamentals remain the same. Reps still need to build relationships with the right people, fully understand the customer’s business and challenges, ensure value propositions are compelling to the right people, and craft impactful business cases. Today’s complexity just means they need to do it better than before.
Excelling in the complexity is about recognizing the simplicity underneath. Sometimes your reps just need to be reminded of that.