Sales Trends Emphasize Account Growth: Breaking Down 2017

What was once perceived as the simple task of convincing someone to buy something you’re selling has snowballed into a very complex, tech-driven process that few—including both the sellers and the buyers—completely understand. In the B2B world, there’s so much at stake that, according to CEB, there is added pressure on companies to seek more revenue from existing customers.

CEB has identified five sales trends for account growth in 2017.

Emphasis on Cross-selling and Account Growth

The first is an emphasis on both cross-selling and account growth with current customers. According to CEB, the shift towards added services and digitization is increasing focus on recurring revenue streams, and higher costs of new business acquisition are putting pressure on existing accounts to fuel growth.

Disciplined Spending on Sales Enablement

The second trend is more disciplined spending to help sales teams succeed, also known as sales enablement. Sales organizations have been bingeing on sales enablement tools, spending an average of $4,797 per quota carrying rep annually. Is it helping? Not so much. These tools that are supposed to boost sales productivity, in fact, slow reps down by adding complexity. In a September 2016 report, CEB noted that 62 percent of seller burden can be attributed to overly complex internal processes and procedures that reps are asked to follow. And sellers are frustrated about being held back by their own sales organizations. In a survey of over 2,000 reps across a range of industries and regions, sellers report that a full 20 percent of stalled and lost deals are the result of internal complexity.

Our belief is that technology-based sales tools can also create a false sense of security that you know more about your customer than you actually do. And it creates a false sense that you’re engaging with your customers when you actually aren’t. You know all those automated, “personalized” emails that go out under your name? Many of your prospects are deleting them. So, maybe you aren’t connecting the way you think you are.

Beyond this ROI problem is something very fundamental. People buy from people. Tools can be a great aid but relationships matter, and keeping up with what is truly important to your customers is critical to growing these relationships. If you don’t do it your competitors will.

Customer Centricity

 A third trend CEB is looking at addresses “customer centricity.” This is something we’ve preached about a lot over the years—the fact that the sales process isn’t about you, but about the customer. CEB couches it in terms of improving the customer experience to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy your products, with a focus on the aspects of the purchasing process that customers struggle with even before they engage with a specific supplier: All these decisions we have to make! What do we need? How does it fit into our strategic plan? What’s the budget? Their point—and ours—is that sellers should work hard to understand a customer’s business goals and buying group dynamics.

Marketing Accross the Sales Funnel

CEB has also addressed the continuity of marketing across the sales funnel. According to CEB, progressive B2B marketing companies now manage a portfolio of marketing technology that deal with all aspects of the commercial process. They’re doubling efforts to develop customer buying journey maps to better support sellers with content and improve the customer purchase experience. And, more firms are creating a sales development representative (SDR) role that reports directly to marketing to improve lead qualification and sales productivity. CEB believes we’ll see more organizations do this.

How could they improve on this alignment? We believe that one of the best ways marketing
can support sales is to spoon feed them the kind of customer and CXO insight we are always talking about—and then create programs that are designed to reach and engage customers more meaningfully.

Simplification

Finally, CEB believes that in 2017, simplification will be at the heart of sales strategy. The most successful commercial teams will be those that are able to simplify both internally and for their client. CEB warns sales teams not to assume that customers are automatically empowered with information and options. Like you, they, too, are overloaded with them.

Our advice? Don’t you pile on, too. Keep it simple by doing your homework and then homing in only on the solutions that address their specific challenges. Stop trying to sell them stuff they don’t need. Be patient by building your own credibility over time. Then you can upsell. Learn what is most important to them, grow the relationship, and consistently make it about them.

It’s always a good feeling to see your advice and perspectives validated by another set of experts. The findings of CEB make it clear that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to sales—not even great technology. We’ve long been advocates of that perspective. If you’re going to achieve great things in 2017, you’ll have to get back to basics. Focus on your customer. Learn what drives them. Make it simple for them to make good decisions. Then repeat.