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With the exponential increase in the number of enterprises competing for positioning themselves in the marketplace and the post-pandemic slowdown in the global economy, B2B sales have become challenging than ever. Surveys suggest that unlike older times when the buyer decisions were mostly dependent on their interaction with a sales representative, 59% of clients now spend a considerable amount of time researching on their service provider, way before the first interaction. Thus, the parameters for purchase being extensively analyzed and compared with other buying options by the client, influencing their decisions becomes a herculean task for the sales personnel.
In this scenario, where the conventional hard-selling tactics are failing, sales personnel need to transform into ‘trusted advisors‘ who can establish and maintain meaningful connections with their customers. For this to happen, it is vital to find ways to increase the share of mind and effort of the sales personnel, leading to impactful communication and acting as an enabler to the brand’s broader functioning in the marketplace. Through proper grooming and mentoring, sales personnel can be transformed into Evangelists who can be loyal, lifelong advocates of your brand.
According to Christian Buckley, the award-winning technology evangelist, “Evangelism changes perceptions, which builds credibility and creates trust, which then creates momentum, influencing the pipeline, and provides tools that sales can leverage, leading to more sales and stronger customer advocacy.”
Many businesses have embraced the idea that their loyal customers and leaders can be prospective evangelists. Reputed companies across various industries like Google, Amazon, Adobe, HCL, TCS etc., are now actively hiring evangelists in their specialized fields. These evangelists can serve as good confidants for their clients and build lasting relationships, thus enhancing the brand‘s strategic visibility. However, very few have explored their own sales representatives‘ potential to passionately spread the brand story, articulate their vision, convey its relevance, and defend them against challenges.
Here is how you can ready your sales team to make the switch:
- Identify in-house talents who possess essential knowledge in the core area, adopt a consultative approach, maintain good customer relationships, and engage in extra-role promotions.
- Build confidence in them by conveying how they will be able to close deals better, achieve targets efficiently, and be a key part of business growth with the new job role.
- Encourage them to work on their digital presence, identify the potential clients online, and establish rapport with them.
- Provide grooming sessions to inculcate your product/services’ advocacy and upskill them to take up the new job role.
- Involve them in cross-functional team collaborations and create a feedback system where your innovation strategy supports your sales team, and your sales team supports your innovation strategy.
Beyond the functional aspect of selling a product or service, sales and salespeople have this immense potential to be a critical element of go-to-market strategies by raising their bars to serve as evangelists. This is how they remain uniquely relevant and help their organizations create and maintain the market position in the long run.
Draup for Sales provides deep insights around industry trends and key events within an organization or industry’s ecosystem that extend across various business functions. This intelligence can serve as a primary component for analyzing how your competitors are adopting the trends and framing engaging narratives of the sales pitch. By enabling the evangelists to keep track of the latest shifts in industry trends, Draup becomes a powerful tool in their hands and helps them to be always ahead of the curve.
