Every quarter there is the inevitable rush to close deals, to hit our numbers. Yet there are so many challenges and barriers. The global economy/turmoil and continued layoffs/reductions, and shuffling of priorities–both within our customers, markets, and within our own organizations. The simultaneous promise/threat of AI, “Will it help me be more efficient or will it make me unnecessary?” The increasing difficulty–perhaps–inability to engage our customers, with many claiming “outbound is dead,” and others seeing PLG and other inbound strategies as critical to making the numbers (forgetting PLG applies to only a small set of solutions).
Add on to this the terrifying data on sales performance–a few numbers from EBSTA, in the second half of 2023, 73% of reps missed quota, 23% of reps contribute 83% of revenue (our good friend, Pareto, again), 39% of deals slipping, and win rates plummeting another 47%. This combined with other data showing win rates at less than 20%. And other data showing 1000-1400 touches per opportunity (Thank goodness we can solve this with AI, easily hitting 1000s of touches a day…… tongue firmly planted in cheek.)
It’s left many leaders and sellers wringing their hands, thinking, “Woe are we….” They are looking at more cost controls, more layoffs, wondering how they will make their numbers (perhaps looking for new jobs, thinking “the grass is greener…”).
And others go, blithely, along, “AI can help you double/triple/quadruple your personalized outreach!” With managers going along with this, saying, “More top of funnel focus!”
But, we shouldn’t be shocked or surprised. We’ve created the majority of circumstances surrounding this. It’s our mindless focus on volumes/velocity and pitching our products through endless sequences. Our fixation on mechanizing everything in selling, minimizing the human connection, and our failure to connect with customers on their problems/challenges. We are reaping the results of what we have sowed. We’ve seen the explicit signals around this for years, yet we haven’t been paying as much attention as we should.
In spite of everything, customers are still buying, though the economy drives them to focus on mission critical purchases. But as we emerge from the downturn, we are seeing increases in buying. Increasingly, however, through our diligence, customers are recognizing the don’t need sellers to buy, with over 80% preferring rep free buying experiences and total time allocated to all sellers is less than 17%.
For much of their buying, this makes sense. We’ve, particularly in SaaS, proactively pushed for the consumerization of buying. Customers don’t need sales people, the risk of a bad decision is very low, the financial impact is very low—it’s so much easier to buy on line, self service seems so much better. Amazon and others taught us this over the past decades, and many transactional products are better purchased with no seller involvement. And AI, when leveraged by customers, makes that even easier. Kiss those selling jobs good-bye! It’s better for customers and it’s better for us.
Sorry for my absence of empathy, but we’ve seen this trend for at least the last 7 years as we have proactively mechanized and dehumanized selling. We have taught the customers they don’t need us, and they have learned these lessons well!
At the same time, too many have ignored the customer pleas for help! They aren’t overtly asking for help, but the data shows they are struggling. They need help and they actively accept help–that is the right kind!
We know over 60% of committed change/buying efforts fail, largely because of lack of confidence and FOMU. We know a large percentage of those who do end up buying have regret–less over whether they have chosen the right solution, but more about whether they have done the right thing.
They are crying for help! But few seem equipped or willing to give customers the help they are asking for–“Understand my business, help me understand my problem, help me make sense of what I am seeing, help me feel confident, that I am doing the right thing….”
But there’s more. Some data suggest only 3% of customers in our markets are actively looking to change and buy, another 7% could be interested. That’s actually amazing–trillions of dollars in commerce from just 10% of the market. (I do question this data, when one looks at embedded products, basic infrastructure products/services, and so forth. Though much of this is the result of buying decisions being made in the past, with ongoing fulfillment until we decide to change).
One thinks, what about the other 90%, what opportunity exists there? Certainly, the majority may not need to do anything, in a VUCA world, 90% seems high. There are also some that should change but may not recognize the need to. Even identifying another few percent, inciting them to search, then change, then buy can mean tens of billions of dollars flowing into the markets.
The bottom line is so EXCITING! There is so much business opportunity available for us to capture!!! Our customers are crying for help, they want to change, they want to buy, they just struggle with doing so!
Yet we sit, wringing our hands thinking, “Woe are we….,” failing to recognize the customers are doing exactly what we taught them to do.
Our customers need help–help specific to them, their challenges and problems. They need to learn about these things, what others do, risks, challenges, and how to get organizational and executive support. They need to build confidence in the change and that they are doing the right thing for themselves and their organization. They need someone to hear them, who understands how they feel, and who cares about their success.
And all of this is independent and precedes solution selection.
While sellers are, possibly, best positioned to provide this help, few are providing that help. And this is the performance and opportunity gap our customers and we face. But if we do start providing that help, the opportunity is enormous! Working with the customers, providing the help, support, understanding, will build trust, confidence. As they become more confident, fewer decisions will end in no decision made. And as we help them navigate the buying process they will be more focused and efficient, reducing their buying cycle.
Think of it, win rates, based on the trust we are establishing, skyrocket. No decision made plummets because we are helping build confidence in what they are doing. And buying/sales cycles reduce because we help them navigate the process much more efficiently!
The customers are telling us what they need and how we can create value with them. Only a few sellers are doing this effectively. Imagine what would happen if we changed what and how we do this.
How do we make this transition? It isn’t easy, but it doesn’t need to be difficult—and we can implement begin to see results relatively quickly. And as we learn from our experience, our productivity and performance will sky rocket.
In fairness to sellers, they don’t know how to engage customers in this way, we haven’t trained them to do this. We aren’t providing the tools, process, support, programs to facilitate their ability to engage in this way. We aren’t providing the coaching to enable their success.
You might think, “Dave, this is incredibly tough, it will take a long time to produce the results and we don’t have the time!” I’ll acknowledge, as with anything there is a learning curve. But there are things we can do to accelerate this. Basic business acumen training and coaching. Focusing content and programs on business problems not our solutions. Talking to customers about their problems, concerns, issues. It’s nothing but curiosity, genuine interest, questioning and very active listening.
In some way, they know more than they think they know. They have some knowledge about the challenges and problems, but that knowledge is trapped in the context of what our products do to address those. If we simply stopped talking about the product, but asking about the problems we created the problem to solve. If we probe, actively listen, we have a huge capability to change the conversation in a very short period of time. And the more we practice this, the better we get.
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