Imagine one of your sales reps is meeting with the CXO of a Fortune 1000 company. He or she is working hard to persuade that executive to do business with you — not your competitor. Now, ask yourself: “To be successful, what does my sales rep absolutely need to be able to do?”
One key to success is the ability of your sales reps to deliver content effectively.
According to a recent SiriusDecisions survey, a whopping 79 percent of B2B buyers say the content provided by a sales rep is “very” to “extremely” influential in their decision to choose one vendor over another.1
It’s likely that your company invests heavily in creating content that supports successful selling, including: industry research and insights, marketing messaging, sales presentations, solution proposals, etc.
You expect your sales professionals to deliver content in ways that differentiate your company. The ability to deliver this content effectively is especially important for sales professionals selling to senior executives.
Executive buyers aren’t persuaded by detailed descriptions of product or service features — what they want are context-specific solutions to their most urgent business challenges.
They expect your sales reps to deliver provocative insights and relevant recommendations. Sadly, a big gap exists between expectations and reality.
Most B2B sales reps struggle to deliver your content in a compelling way. Typically, content delivered by sales reps IS NOT:
- Clear and quickly understood by buyers.
- Connected to executive buyers’ critical needs and concerns.
- Able to convince buyers to trust the credibility, insight, and expertise of your sales reps.
Failure to deliver content effectively has consequences:
- Buyers don’t see any difference between you and your competition.
- Executives conclude you should be working with lower-level buyers.
- Your solutions become commoditized, resulting in price negotiations that erode your margins.
To be effective when selling to executive buyers, your reps must be able to deliver content and communicate in ways that enhance an executive’s perception of your value — not erode it.
How effective are your sales professionals? To help you assess how ready your reps are to connect with and influence executive buyers, download the brief: Is Your Sales Team Prepared to Have Business Outcome Conversations with Executives?
In it, you’ll discover a checklist of conversation and executive selling skills your reps need to be successful. You’ll also learn why most sales training fails to make a lasting impact on sales performance — and what you can do about it.
The ability to influence decision makers, build trust, and gain buy-in is critical to your sales organization’s success. Learn more about Mandel’s approach to Influencing Skills Training.
1 Sirius Decisions Summit 2016 Highlights: Sales Content — What Winners Do Differently.
