Advantexe, like many training companies, has totally transformed our Sales Training curriculum
to respond to the disrupted needs of the new digital world of selling. One of the things that I can share is that unlike other functions of your business that have adapted quickly, your experienced sales professionals are struggling to figure out what they should be doing differently to embrace digital.
Over the past year, I have re-written our Strategic Business Selling curriculum to help those non-believers bridge the gap between where they were and where they are going in the new digital world of selling. We have deployed the content and strategic selling business simulations with global companies in all the major industries including healthcare, chemicals, and technology.
Are your sales professionals walking, talking, and acting like technology-savvy strategic advisors, or are they operating with an analog mindset like it’s 1992?
Many sales professionals of today grew up with traditional prospecting methodologies, generating leads in person at conferences, networking events, and using the phone to cold call. Traditional approaches are still alive and well, but digital aspects of selling require an entirely different skill set and approach to prospecting.
One of the first things that we share in the new curriculum is a strong belief that:
Digital Technologies + Enhanced Relationships = More Sales
Think about it. If you are great at leveraging digital technologies like ZOOM, Teams, Webex, and Social Media tools you can:
- See more customers
- Develop deeper and more intimate relationships
- Operate in a transparent and professional working environment
For your sales professionals to reach prospects in meaningful ways, they must be mobile and digitally savvy, becoming experts in the online consumption and digital communication patterns of their prospects.
This doesn’t mean traditional aspects of prospecting along with the relationship-building component are any less important. If anything, relationships are even more critical in an increasingly crowded marketplace. When all value propositions inside the prospect’s head appear equal, they, in turn, tend to buy from sales professionals they like and trust. However, your sales professionals must begin potential relationships where their prospects start, and that is online and in searches for solutions.
The move toward starting research online means prospects are presenting themselves as being much more highly qualified than ever before. However, because prospects have already done their homework, they have little patience for sales professionals who aren’t complete experts in all the details of their products and services.
Transforming Your Sales Team to Sell in the Digital World
Based on our new curriculum, here are three quick tips that you can immediately implement to help transform your sales tea to become digital experts:
1) Build their online presence
I am shocked to share that about 50% of the sales professionals I have trained over the past two years have no online presence. It is critical that every sales professional on your team has a professional and updated LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
2) Guide them to curating content and becoming experts
Selling by telling is dead. Today’s sales professionals need to establish themselves as experts and one of the best ways of doing that is by curating and sharing content. This includes writing blogs, sharing internal content (as long as it doesn’t seem like a brochure), and posting interesting data that will be appreciated by prospects.
3) Coach them to listen socially
It’s one thing to be active and proactively post, it’s another thing to listen to prospects by leveraging social media to understand what is being said and how sales professionals can take advantage of the content. For example, you may be targeting a key prospect and that prospect is a regular provider of content. That content could become a great conversation starter.
In summary, transforming sales professionals to become digitally savvy takes a lot of work and can take a long time to accomplish if not taken seriously. A digitally savvy sales professional should be someone who guides the prospect in their decision-making and buying journey. The main point is that the digitally savvy, technologically enhanced sales professional has mastered the skills around traditional business development by blending in new tolls to get the prospect to like them and trust them.
