Is B2B Sales Broken?
For many years I’ve done primary research on the changing behavior of business to business (B2B) buyers. I won’t rehash all of that data, but I mention the research because it has shown me over and over that the buyer half of a B2B transaction has changed in ways that make traditional selling processes difficult. Where buyers look for information, what and who they trust and how they want to interact with a provider have all shifted over the past ten years. The one big take-a-way from all those surveys for me, is that buyers don’t want random seller contact, they will control when they reach out and they control their “buyer journey” not you. Their preferences change though, when the contact is in the right context and is relevant to some need or desire. In other words, as a sales rep, unless you either get really lucky, or you truly understand a prospects “current” business challenges and needs, they do not want to hear from you.
Recently I was sponsored by sales acceleration platform provider SpotLogic to do some research and a report on sales productivity. Looking at the other side of the B2B purchasing challenge proved to be very enlightening. At a high level what I learned is that the changing behavior of buyers is only a part of the problem. The buyer part of the equation certainly laid the foundation for the current sales productivity crisis, but what I found is a more complicated story. There’s plenty of data that shows that selling is harder or much harder than it was just 5 years ago. That reflects the changing buyer behaviors and a misalignment in the sales process.
Because selling is harder now and has been getting harder for at least the last ten years, a cycle has emerged that processes and existing sales tech does not address. It goes like this:
Hiring sales reps has gotten more difficult, particularly because of the current employment environment. It takes over 6 months on average to hire a new rep.
Getting a new sales rep productive (onboarding) is difficult and takes over 9 months from start date to get them fully competent. Many reps lack basic sells skills (55% according to Forbes) and training is often ineffective (according to Spotio 84% of sales training is lost after 90 days).
Making quota has gotten harder (I’d attribute this to that buyer - seller misalignment). According to a Forbes article last year, only 53% make quota.
Selling is harder and that lowers reps job satisfaction and increases turnover. According to a Sales Insights Lab study only 17.6% of reps rated job satisfaction as outstanding. Average rep turnover is over 34%, but in software companies 1 in 10 sees as high as 55% turnover. Average tenure is down to 18 months.
If it takes 9 months to get a new rep fully productive and the average tenure is 18 months, that could leave only 9 months of full productivity for a new rep. Add to that the 2021-2022 “great resignation”, ineffective training, the cost to replace a rep including both cost to hire and lost revenue from the lack of a rep during the search, and an extremely messy set of selling tools (G2 has at least 17 different categories of sales software) and the picture is bleak.
There is an emerging set of selling tools though that can help address (and hopefully break) this cycle by working across the entire sales process. From the report: ”An emerging category of solutions though, called sales acceleration platforms, can create a digital support structure that combines AI, on-demand content and crowd sourced intelligence to improve each customer interaction. Using a sales acceleration platform ensures new reps onboard quickly, come up to speed and meet performance targets sooner and existing reps increase productivity while reducing the ‘friction’ that is creating the low job satisfaction and turnover.”
Take a look at the report to read the whole story, and see an example of the financial and productivity impact of a sales acceleration platform.
