MarketStar Blog

Every customer journey starts with your sales team. Stop. Please ask yourself if you are liking the results. Are you accurately defining success for this team? How does your definition translate to the larger enterprise clients’ sales experience?

Key Takeaways

In response to the demands of physical distancing and work from home that came with the onset of the current pandemic, many sales organizations were quick in adapting to a virtual sales model that they hoped would only be a holding pattern until the situation “returns to normal.” However, what we are looking at is not a temporary disruption to the sales process and methodologies, but a thoroughgoing restructuring. While many of the digital shifts were already in play before the pandemic, the new normal requires companies to adopt them within much shorter timeframes. Sales enablement has a vital role in all of these changes as it provides a robust framework to support remote sales training and coaching, virtual selling, and the implementation of a virtual sales model that is appropriate for the emerging digital world. 

No sales rep succeeds on their own. Successful sales performance is the result of many factors. You need the right leads, the right sales pitch, the right conversion tools, the right customer service, and more. Sales success is the result of solid sales enablement, which is why successful companies are more focused on developing a frictionless, integrated sales process.

​​

The temptation for any B2B sales team is to hunt for whales. If you can land that one big deal, you get a big payoff. But while you are spending all that time and energy hunting whales, dozens of smaller fish may slip past you. Too often, the focus on enterprise deals eclipses the profit potential from SMB sales. SMBs deals can be easier to land, and they can have greater lasting value.

The overall success of any sales and marketing initiative ultimately hinges on customer success. It’s one thing to complete a sale or close a contract, but the ultimate goal is to ensure that the customer receives maximum value from the sale or engagement. Turning a sale into a successful engagement means happy customers, which translates into additional sales to those customers and reduced customer churn.

When it comes to selling B2B technology, landing an enterprise deal is like grabbing the brass ring. Enterprise sales generate more revenue with larger and higher-value contracts. Enterprise sales also lead to longer engagements, which means ongoing revenue and more opportunity to cross-sell and upsell.

Selling complex technology requires special skills and technical expertise, but knowing how to sell the technology doesn’t mean you have to know how to build it. However, when you engage in consultative selling, the prospect is looking for sophisticated, custom solutions to complex problems. That’s why selling technical solutions requires sales engineers (SEs).

Selling technology is never easy, and when you are dealing with enterprise sales, there is nothing simple or fast about this selling process. Enterprise sales are complex because enterprise technology is complex. There are many variables, interdependencies, and integrations to worry about—let alone matching the technology to the customers’ needs.

If you are in sales (or a movie buff), you have undoubtedly heard the phrase “ABC, always be closing,” from Glengarry Glen Ross. That may be a good motivational mantra for selling real estate, but it’s less effective in B2B sales. When dealing with lead qualification for B2B technology, selling it makes more sense to think of ABC as “always be consulting.”