In B2B sales, the rules of engagement are being rewritten at breakneck speed. The question isn't whether your team needs to adapt – it's whether they can adapt fast enough to survive.
As a sales manager or director, you're standing at a crossroads: evolve your team's skills or watch your sales figures plummet.
In this blog, we’ll look at the changing B2B buying trends, the skills gap your team might be facing and where you need to make improvements in order to stay ahead.
The new B2B buyer – A different beast
Today's B2B buyer is a far cry from the buyers of the past. They're more informed, more independent, and more demanding than ever before. The pandemic has accelerated digital adoption, and economic uncertainties have sharpened focus on ROI. Your sales team's old playbook? It's obsolete.
Mckinsey, in their 2023 report, state that 2/3 B2B buyers prefer digital self-serve and remote human engagement over face-to-face interactions and 70% of B2B decision-makers say they're open to making new, fully self-serve or remote purchases up tp $500,000. Alongside this, Gartner's report states the average number of stakeholders involved in a B2B purchase has risen from 5.4 to 6.8 in just two years. As the average B2B buyer adapts, so must your sales team.
The skills gap: Where most teams fall short
If your team is still relying on charm and a firm handshake, they're already behind. The new B2B sales environment demands a sophisticated skill set that many teams simply don't possess.
In order to keep up with the rapid changes, your team needs to be able to navigate virtual selling as effortlessly as they do during in-person meetings. Although it can be difficult to translate your in-person skills to virtual environments, improving your communication skills specifically for digital platforms is crucial. Improving these skills means you’ll be able to master virtual presentation techniques that increase the likelihood of making a sale, engage audiences more effectively and you’ll be able to create more compelling sales collateral.
The power of artificial intelligence and data analytics in sales is also something that cannot be overstated, yet many sales professionals lack the skills to effectively leverage the new tools available to them. Some key areas for improvement include understanding how to interpret AI driven insights and using analysis to predict and identify high-quality leads. AI can even be used to personalise proposals and other sales collateral so that it resonates with the customer and their needs.
In many organisations, there's a significant disconnect between sales and marketing teams. This misalignment can lead to inconsistent messaging, ineffective use of resources, and a disjointed customer experience. To address this, modern sales teams need to develop a deeper understanding of marketing strategies and goals in order to be able to collaborate more closely. By providing regular feedback on lead quality and customer insights, it fosters a culture of collaboration
Failing to upskill your team doesn't just mean missing quotas. It means losing market share to more adaptive competitors, declining customer satisfaction and loyalty, increased turnover as top performers seek more progressive environments and erosion of your company's reputation in the industry.
The upskilling imperative: A call to action
The time for incremental change is over. Your team needs a comprehensive skills overhaul, focusing on consultative, customer-centric selling and data-driven decision making.
The payoff means more than just survival. Companies that invest in comprehensive sales team upskilling thrive. In fact, one company that completed Huthwaite’s SPIN® Selling & SPIN® Coaching training saw their successful sales outcomes increase from 23% to 94%, with another company seeing a 53% increase in successful outcomes.
Sellers need to move beyond features to articulate clear, quantifiable ROI for the customer, while being able to adopt a flexible and iterative approach to complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles.
The bottom line
The B2B sales landscape has changed irrevocably. Your team's skills need to change with it. It's not just about meeting quotas anymore—it's about securing your company's future in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
The choice is clear: Invest in your team's skills now or prepare to be left behind. What will your next move be?
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