Sales has never been tougher

2021 continues to be tough for many businesses and their salespeople. They are feeling the strain with only 22% expected to meet their end of year revenue goal. Buyers are also finding it tough. They must be 100% confident that any investment will deliver results, but they are faced with lots of options from lots of providers- many of which sound the same. How do they choose? Increasingly it’s the sales experience that makes the difference.

This means that salespeople need to be better than ever before. A poor sales experience just won’t cut it anymore. Here are four steps that salespeople must follow if they are to succeed:

1.    Focus on client ROI
Return on investment has always been important for our clients, however, right now it’s pretty much the only thing they care about. According to a recent SBI survey, 58% of CMOs say they are having increased interactions with their CEO and you can bet that those CEOs aren’t too interested in anything but return. Salespeople must make results central to every sales interaction.

2.    Discuss and share changes in audience behaviour.
The marketer’s job has always been to turn audiences into customers. Central to that is having a deep understanding of how audience behaviour is changing. Salespeople that have a deep understanding of their audiences have a significant advantage when it comes to building business cases for marketing spend. Ensure that you have up-to-date audience personas and then teach your client about the audience’s current priorities and challenges. Use that insight to justify why and how the audience needs to hear from your client now. 

3.    Discuss and teach clients about how to market to the audience

o One of the biggest challenges that clients face is how to message. Up-to-date, rich, audience personas will reveal to clients why they need to keep investing in marketing, but they will also shape the messaging that should sit at the heart of any campaign. Broadly, there are three things that audiences need clients to demonstrate now:

• Empathy
• Purpose
• Value

4.    Brainstorm the strongest platforms to deliver this message
The nature of your event has probably changed, so clients need to be helped with understanding how best to take the audience on the desired journey. 

Meet the Flume team at Confex at stand F24C

Flume’s Founder, Raoul Monks, will be hosting The Sales Excellence Theatre where event sales professionals can access the latest insights and best practice. The panel will be sharing their insights on sales strategy, winning the right kind of business, team structure and focus, and what sales leaders need to do to develop high-performing, best-in-class sales teams.

For free up-to-date sales tips and insight follow us on LinkedIn or visit us at flumetraining.com/resources.