In 2024, buyers have new, higher expectations for suppliers – expectations that far too many organizations are failing to meet. Our research has clearly shown that there is a widening disconnect between sellers and buyers, one that stems from a mismatch between how sellers are selling and how customers are buying. And if you have seen longer sales cycles, more sales lost to “no decision”, lost sales productivity, or missed revenue targets, then you are looking at the evidence. Because from our 25 years of consulting, it is almost never the product or the value of the offering. Today’s buyers simply face new challenges in their buying process that weren’t present when many sales methodologies were developed.
- No Single Decision Maker. Modern buying decisions are comprised of a dynamic network of individuals, sometimes including individuals outside the company, or not traditionally considered decision makers. Many of these individuals have the power to slow or stop a buying journey in its entirety.
- Unprecedented Choice. Even if an offering has a proven and demonstrable ROI, there are countless ways an organization can reduce costs, increase market share, boost employee morale, or reach nearly any value proposition.
- Constrained Resources. Regardless of the size of an organization, there is still a finite amount of time, money, and resource. Moreover, most organizations are not actively sitting on additional resources when they are available.
- Inundated with Information. Buyers can, and often do, spend dozens of hours doing research on your offerings and your competitors. That is on top of the endless asks for time they receive in their inbox from automated sales and marketing outreach.
As a result, we have been hearing the same asks throughout our customer interviews: “Don’t waste my time” and “meet me where I am.” Buyers expect personalized, specific, and relevant value – where, when, and how they want it. Yet this is not how most organizations operate. That is why organizations that still believe they can pull a customer through their sales process have been particularly affected by the rise in customer indecision and increasing rate of halted buying cycles. The focus must shift from the sales process to supporting the buyer through their buying journey lifecycle.
These changes in customer behavior represent a new challenge that businesses must urgently overcome if they are to generate revenue effectively. Today’s sellers must:
- Manage and coordinate the many key players influencing the decision
- Engage them with multichannel and personalized communications
- Use these vehicles to bring relevant value and how the player wants it
- And stay on top of these exchanges, interactions, and follow ups with near immediate response time
However, the desire to stay with legacy approaches has made this a near impossible task leading not only to missed forecasts, but to employee burnout. Externally, sellers cannot be expected to drive the customer decision without a clear understanding of how their market buys, and are instead, becoming frustrated by these longer, more difficult sales cycles. Internally, salespeople are also overwhelmed by the number of ineffectual tools and irrelevant, non-customizable collateral they are being given to solve these issues. A new kind of enablement is needed.
To manage the customer conversation, the right strategies and the right technology are no longer optional. Organizations cannot afford to leave the buying journey unknown or to use their sales and marketing tools to speed up legacy approaches. But to generate revenue effectively, it will take more than just sales and marketing to meet and exceed the expectations of today’s buyers.
The new role of enablement and technology is to introduce and support Modern Selling: an aligned approach that enables all customer-facing roles to engage in and stay engaged across the buying journey lifecycle by creating a positive impact. To achieve this, organizations must fully adopt and fully integrate technology more effectively.
