the pandemic interrupted the sales process to improve it;
The rise of technology stacks is affecting performance
Top sellers are taking advantage of these trends to get ahead.
Since LinkedIn is the leading social media platform for B2B sales, the benefits of using our teacher database many sales reps and managers will use these findings to adjust and confirm if they are using best practices, but there are also many takeaways that marketing teams should be aware of .
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What Sales learned: Research is the key
What Marketing Can Learn From All This: Names and Contact Information Aren't Enough to Drive Sales
One thing that is undoubtedly true is the fact that top salespeople do far more research than less-performing salespeople. A full 76% of top salespeople stated that they “always” do research before reaching out to a potential prospect. Only 47% of other salespeople made the same claim.
This is in line with the report's findings that true "cold" calls are disappearing, and "warm" calls are the standard for top performers, with 88% of salespeople saying they engage in "warm" calls.
The report says sellers now need to do "much more" research on buyers before reaching out than they did before the pandemic.
68% of buyers say they are unlikely to engage with a salesperson who communicates information that is irrelevant to their job, so it is important for sales professionals to understand the following before reaching out:
Have an idea of your business needs;
Understanding the role of the lead in the purchasing process ;
Provide personalized communications.
When buyers receive messages that are relevant to them or that challenge their current way of thinking, they respond well.
Marketing can help your sales team by providing qualified leads with meaningful sales intelligence data...
What Sales learned: Sales technology stacks are growing
What Marketing can learn from all this: Sales intelligence and CRM tools are the most important to invest in #SMARKETING
The vast majority of salespeople said they planned to use sales technology “much more” or “more” often this year than in previous years.
The top sales technology types ranked first were CRM and sales intelligence tools, which tied for first.
Marketers overwhelmingly say incomplete data is a major problem for them. Nearly half of all marketers (45%) say they have lost sales because they have incomplete data that doesn’t fully match what they know to be true about their customers.
Using buyer intent technology to find prospects who are ready to buy right now is becoming more critical to the sales process. Nearly 85% of salespeople say determining buyer intent is important to their sales organization.
Sales organizations are using a variety of tools to measure buyer intent. Topping the list is LinkedIn Sales Navigator , but I would like to shamelessly include another technology, Ion, Rock Content’s interactive platform , which can be used to collect meaningful business data on leads and stimulate sales with personalized sales intelligence insights
.What Sales learned: Salespeople only spend about 25% of their time selling
What Marketing Can Learn From All This: When you look at sales “activities,” you’re only seeing a small part of the work.
Salespeople, according to our data, spend about a quarter of their time (27%) selling products and services. The rest of their time is spent updating their CRM, administrative tasks, internal meetings, and training.
In addition to these findings, top performers (identified as selling at more than 150% of quota) spend 10% less time selling and replace it with additional research and spend 18% more additional time updating CRM than their average-performing counterparts.
The report quotes David JP Fisher (President of RockStar Consulting) as saying: “ Don’t be too quick to dismiss ‘non-selling activity’. The modern sales cycle requires more than just smiling and clocking in for a meeting to be successful. Research, training and collaboration are key elements required to move deals forward. The key is to ask yourself whether an activity has short- or long-term value or whether you are simply doing it out of inertia or poor planning .”
Marketing leaders can recognize that time allocations that differ from average employees are teachable skills and can work with sales management to ensure relevant research topics are conducted that resonate with their messaging.
What Sales learned: Top performers work closely with Marketing
What Marketing Can Learn From All This: Meet Monthly With Sales And Use Their Feedback
70% of top performers in the LinkedIn survey rated the leads they receive from Marketing as “excellent,” while only 43% of average salespeople rated leads obtained from Marketing the same way.
The takeaway here is that top performers work with their marketing teams to understand buyer intent from various lead sources and know which marketing messages resonated most with the buyer and therefore know how to work with them.
The report recommends that sales and marketing teams meet monthly so that marketing can keep sales updated on the buying journey and understand how to best approach leads. But also to get feedback from sales on which content sources are working best, topics and questions that are coming up on their sales calls, and then marketing can adjust its content strategy accordingly.
Conclusion
The marketers who are making the most meaningful sales are those who are reaching the right customers. They are using the right technology, collecting the best data, and using that data to make sure they are only sending messages that are appropriate for the customers they want to reach.
At the end of the day, sales and marketing should be working towards a common goal, and while the worlds of marketing and sales evolve independently, understanding the trends and challenges of both will drive a thriving organization.
