Digitisation and buyer empowerment are impacting on the role of sales. Victoria Clarke asks: does this signal the end of the traditional salesperson? And what effect might it have on marketers?
Sales has come a long way from the days of a lowly salesman travelling around with his samples and a briefcase. Back then, it was often the only way to engage with a prospect or customer. Despite this, the role of the salesperson was critical in gaining traction among potential customers and then nurturing that relationship until hands were shaken and the dotted line was signed. Sales were traditionally the only customer-facing role and this role was defined. No salesperson, no relationship with the buyer, no deal.
Fast forward to 2014 and it’s a completely different story. The sales landscape is now awash with tools and technology allowing sales teams of varying sizes to engage with their target audience, anywhere, anytime, using multiple channels. But this has created a double-edged sword. The sales team may be empowered but so too are the buyers, and this shift, combined with increasingly blurred lines between sales and marketing, is forcing the sales role into the spotlight.
So, will sales succumb to a digital deluge that could remove more of their responsibilities? Or perhaps we will see salespeople metamorphose into marketers – and if that’s the case, what does this mean for the marketing department?
Sales funnel shift
The traditional sales funnel has gone through various changes over time, but one of the most significant is how the balance between sales and marketing has shifted. Where once the sales team’s responsibilities dominated a large proportion of the purchasing funnel, today we see marketing (and other business functions for that matter) having much more involvement and influence.
Gudmund Semb, CEO of Germany-based agency Wob, observes this transformation when he comments: “The typical B2B sales process is changing from a sales dominated act, merely based on personal relationships to a marketing driven process.”
This shift in balance between sales and marketing is being driven by a change in business culture (more evident in some organisations than others), which in turn is responding to the attitudes and behaviour of customers who favour genuine engagement over the hard sell. As a result, the boundary between sales and marketing is becoming less defined.
Zoe Hominick, head of SMB marketing at O2 Telefónica, reminds us there has always been some overlap of skills and responsibilities between sales and marketing but this is now becoming more prominent. She says: “There has always been some crossover between the two disciplines but with the end-to-end buying process now more under the control of the customer than ever before, engaging them in an on-going conversation rather than focusing on a hard sell is really important. As a result, the line between sales and marketing is becoming increasingly blurred.”
However, sales have something to learn from this shift, those sales professionals with a deeper understanding of marketing principles will end up on top. James Smee, co-founder of marketing agency Purestone, elaborates on this. He says: “Some of the best examples are where you have a sales director with a solid background and understanding of marketing. A top-down understanding can really help permeate through a sales force and change perception and approach.
“The best sales people have always been part-marketer but this is even truer considering the landscape in 2014. This also works the other way around for marketers needing to have more understanding of the ‘pointy end of things’.”
Semb agrees that the best customer engagement will come as a result of sales and marketing joining forces. He says: “Marketing and sales have become so transparent in what they do that they better become good friends quickly. They do not work in two different areas anymore, but in one single system of information. To market and to sell have become two sides of the same medal.”
So, if the emphasis is on shared skills and sales and marketing integration, could this eventually lead to a scenario where the sales team ceases to exist (at least under its current name) and instead it becomes some kind of extension of marketing?
Paul Everett, director of marketing strategy at The Marketing Practice, postulates: “Maybe in the not too distant future we will see more of a merging of sales and marketing where a virtual team of individuals with different but complementary skills work together to engage with customers and prospects throughout the engagement lifecycle. This could be the answer to a higher quality and more efficient engagement for both the vendor and the customer. So less the death of sales and more the dawn of a new era for outstanding sales engagement.”
The sales enablement effect
Sales enablement is one way to achieve the kind of outstanding sales engagement Everett alludes to, but it also relies on closer alignment between sales and marketing. As the issue of alignment moves higher up the business agenda, the roles of both departments will come under greater scrutiny.
Where once conversations only existed between salespeople and buyers, now other client-facing roles are getting involved in these discussions to help provide a better customer experience and lead prospects through the buying cycle. A recent survey by Avanade revealed 83 per cent of businesses said departments such as marketing, IT and manufacturing, are now playing larger roles in directly managing customer experiences than they did three years ago.
This isn’t to suggest that growing sales enablement will eventually render the role of sales as redundant, however, only that the sales team’s skills will need to adapt to the new dynamics of customer conversations. In fact, if more non-sales personnel take on customer-facing responsibilities to help nurture leads to the final purchasing stages, the sales department will be left with hotter leads than ever before, and therefore achieve greater conversion rates.
A new buyer in town
Another key factor to have affected the traditional sales role over recent years is the rise of the ‘consumerised’ B2B buyer. These buyers are increasingly mimicking the ways of shoppers in their purchasing habits. In particular, business buyers expect to use much of the same technology available to a B2C audience – whether this be social media, online reviews, search, comparison and ecommerce on the desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Avanade’s recent global survey of C-level executives, business unit leaders and IT decision makers revealed more business customers are leveraging social media and online research as opposed to working directly with a salesperson to influence their buying decision. Indeed, it is well documented that B2B buyers will have completed nearly 70 per cent of the purchase decision process before ever contacting a supplier’s sales representative.
The buyer revolution means the dialogue between a prospect and a B2B brand is now two-way. Sales can’t rely on one-way conversations any longer. In addition, customers are having frank discussions about brands in public (i.e. on social media) without any involvement from sales, or anyone else from the business for that matter. Once again though, this doesn’t mean there’s no place for sales, only that the empowered B2B buyer has invalidated the old set of sales rules.
Ben Sturt, managing director at Merchant Marketing Group, comments: “B2C buying practices have ripped up the rulebook for B2B sales teams. Large, slow-moving enterprise sales teams no longer rule the flow of information. The modern sales team has to have the ability to sift through multiple channels of information about their product/service that is both user generated and professionally reviewed, and build the pitch and sales patter to support/challenge the pre-perceived ideas that buyers will now have.”
Man versus machine
The influence of buyer empowerment on the role of sales goes hand-in-hand with how technology is facilitating this. Digital tools have taken over the roles of sales people in many stages of the buying cycle.
One area in particular where we find traditional sales activities being overhauled by digital is that of ecommerce. Forrester recently worked with software company Hybris to produce a joint report entitled Online and Mobile are Transforming B2B Commerce. The research revealed more money is being spent by online customers than offline customers. Equally significant were the findings that saw a higher number of respondents agree they could more effectively build customer loyalty with online customers. With a higher average order value and greater customer loyalty, the argument for ecommerce over the equivalent non-digital sales processes appears clear.
Brian Walker, SVP of strategy at Hybris comments: “It is overstating it to suggest ecommerce will make the traditional sales person’s role defunct, but certainly that role must evolve and the relationship with the customer become one where digital interactions and self-service become the preferred way customers find information and order.”
Many experts across both disciplines maintain the importance of human interaction cannot be overlooked in B2B sales. Sturt reminds us: “People buy people. Digital very easily has the ability to remove the element that encourages people to
buy – trust.”
Research from SCi Sales supports this idea. It revealed almost 70 per cent of B2B sales still involves human interaction. Graham Smith, marketing director at SCi Sales, sums the discussion up poignantly. He says: “Human interaction makes buyers feel valued. As long as buyers are people and not robots, there will always be the need for human interaction. Technology will never be able to effectively map a buying team, decide on who is inflating their influence or convince members of the board you are a safe pair of hands for their £1 million project.”
