Since I started my business nearly 20 years ago (not kidding – my 20^th anniversary is on September 1, please feel free to send me car stuff), I’ve specialized in Business-to-Business (B2B) selling.  I’ve only had a handful of clients in the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) world, and that’s by intent.  Frankly, I enjoy B2B more and I feel I’m better at it.  I’ve made no bones about being a B2B guy.  Most of the pages on my website spell that out.

What I haven’t done is spelled out why B2B selling differs so much from B2C.  That difference is important, because it has implications for hiring, training, and managing “crossover” salespeople – as well as significant differences that the salesperson has to remember in every call.  The steps in the Buyer’s Journey are the same – but the fundamental underpinning of the Journey (Motivation) is very different, and that affects the progression from step to step.  So, let’s identify that difference.

For most large ticket B2C sales opportunities, the sale tends to be emotionally motivated and intellectually checked.  For instance, if someone decides that they want to remodel their kitchen, it’s less likely that they’ve done a time and productivity study on their cooking habits and decided that they need to reconfigure the kitchen in order to reduce cooking time, increase food quality, and enhance the social aspect of their home.  Instead, they look around and just plain don’t like the kitchen as it is anymore.  They want nicer cabinets, newer appliances, etc.  Yes, aspects like features, convenience, and usability come into play, but those aren’t the initial motivators.  The initial motivation tends to be emotional.

What I mean by the sale being “intellectually checked” is that, once they have Investigated their needs and arrived at the Solution, the sale can hit a roadblock at the Evaluation phase.  At this point, the Buyer starts looking at their household budget, the value of their home, and other intellectual factors to ask themselves, “does this make sense?”  That’s where the sale can stall.

The emotional Motivation of B2C selling also means that the Buyer’s Journey tends to happen much more quickly than in most B2B sales.  The urgency is supplied by the Buyer’s emotions, as well as the fact that their motivating factor is basically staring them in the face every day.  The person who wants that kitchen remodel (or car, or house, or new TV, etc.) is looking at that old kitchen on a daily basis – and once they’ve seen the Solution, that kitchen looks a little worse every day.  That means that the B2C salesperson’s pipeline is a fast-moving one all on its own, and even though B2C salespeople can be some of the pushiest ones out there, they really don’t need to be.  Their Buyers are going to reach a decision pretty quickly.

On the other hand, B2B sales cycles can be weeks, months, and even years.  That’s because most B2B sales tend to be intellectually driven and emotionally and intellectually checked.  It’s a partial reversal of the B2C dynamic, but not a complete one.

Most of the time, B2B Buyer’s Journeys begin with someone in the business identifying a need for a new piece of equipment, facility, service, etc., and making at least a partial business case for it.  “If we had this new paving machine, we could add another crew, which would generate X revenue,” and so on.  The skilled B2B salesperson has a much heavier burden in the Investigation phase to help the customer identify the needs and motivating factors behind the purchase – then must tailor the Solution to those needs and achieve the customer’s definition of success.

So far, so good, right?  Here’s the biggest issue that “crossover” salespeople must confront, particularly those moving from B2C to B2B sales:

In B2B selling, the salesperson has a much more active role in helping the Buyer move from step to step through the Buyer’s Journey.

That’s because the B2B Buyer may be motivated – but the motivating factor isn’t staring that Buyer in the face every day as it is with the B2C buyer.  That new paving machine might be a great idea, and might produce amazing ROI, but it’s something that could or would be great to have.  Meanwhile, that Buyer has employees that aren’t showing up, a bulldozer breaking down, and other day-to-day factors that take him away from thinking about the new paving machine.  The proposal then sits in his inbox, getting covered up by other pieces of paper.  It’s not staring him in the face, and it sure as hell isn’t looking at him when he gets home.

The B2B salesperson then enters the “chase cycle,” which is no fun at all.  Meanwhile, the B2C seller has long since gotten their decision on that new kitchen remodel and is either scheduling the installation (because he got the sale) or moving on to the next Buyer.

What’s even funnier is that both buyers could be the same exact person at the same exact time.  The B2B buyer who repeatedly puts off a decision and is perceived as “indecisive” by the salesperson can be the same buyer that quickly says “yes” to the B2C salesperson and buys that new kitchen.  Is that because the B2C salesperson is better?  Not necessarily.

It’s because the B2B buyer can quickly lose Motivation because the need isn’t visible and urgent on a daily basis, while the B2C buyer’s Motivation stares him in the face every day.  Combine that with the fact that B2C decisions tend to initiate emotionally, and that emotional buying decisions tend to carry more urgency than intellectual ones, and it’s no wonder that the B2C selling cycles are much shorter than B2B.

“Ah, but Troy,” you’re saying, “You said that B2B buying decisions end to be emotionally checked. You didn’t explain that.  Are you going to leave me hanging?”  Nope.  The emotion that tends to slow a B2B Buyer’s Journey is FEAR.  Essentially, after the Buyer has progressed through the Investigation, Solution, and Evaluation phase, fear can set in and postpone or even kill the Decision.  That fear can be summed up in one phrase:

“What if it doesn’t work?  I might lose money/lose my job/not get the promotion/etc.”  That fear, if not alleviated, can be a sale-killer.  We’ll talk more about how to alleviate that in a future Navigator.

For now, however, let’s circle back.  What are the implications of the difference between B2C and B2B selling?

For sales leaders looking to hire a “crossover” salesperson, part of the interviewing should be assessing that salesperson’s ability to handle the different dynamic.  For a B2C salesperson crossing to B2B, the slower movement of the sales pipeline can be a morale-killer.  A B2B salesperson crossing to B2C might not understand that the motivating factors are different.  Proceed with caution.

The same goes for “crossover” sales leaders and managers.  Without significant acclimation and retraining, the sales leader can be coaching their salespeople on the wrong motivators.

If you’re selecting a sales trainer, look carefully at their writings and philosophy.  Trainers who focus heavily on customer emotion can be a bad fit for today’s B2B environment.  In fact, one of the biggest changes in selling is the decrease in emotional motivation of B2B buyers.  This has been driven by the abundance of information and technology.

I’ve heard it often said that “selling is selling.”  It’s not. At the very least, B2C and B2B salespeople are different breeds of the same animal.  We’ll talk more about some of the things I’ve discussed in future Navigators.

It’s a common maxim that, in business and in sales, we get what we ask for.  That’s not true, at least normally.  The truth is that we get what we work for.  I’m not talking about working HARD – we all do that.  Nor am I talking about working SMART, because that’s a term that can be interpreted in many different ways.  I’m talking about working INTENTIONALLY, and with the end in mind.  That’s what successful business owners and managers do.

Many times, I talk to business owners who may not be getting what they ASK for – particularly in sales – but they are getting what they WORK for.  This came to mind recently when talking to a business owner who has been through three sales managers in the last five years, complaining that he couldn’t find anyone who really was able to develop salespeople.  Instead, he gets sales managers who focus their time on selling.  This wins business but it doesn’t make the company better.

In going through his past hiring efforts – from ads to interview questions – I quickly realized that he might not be getting what he asks for (he does ask for a sales manager who develops people), but he gets what he works for.  Although he recognizes that the core of sales management is developing people, when it comes time to interview and hire, he focuses on candidates’ sales ability and the time they spend closing sales.

Worse, his entire company culture is centered around selling and sales ability as the measurement of the worth of a sales manager.  His salespeople constantly consider themselves to be in a contest of sales ability with the manager, and the sales manager is evaluated based in part on the number of deals he helps close.  The compensation is heavily weighted toward individual production.  Now I ask you – in this environment, what would you do?  Would you focus on developing salespeople, or would you build your individual sales production?  I think we know the answer to that one.

Or, consider another business owner whose company sells both reconditioned machines as well as new ones.  When confronted with a low price/profit opportunity (which is a separate issue), the salespeople will lean toward selling a reconditioned machine, rather than a new one.  Why?  You’ve probably guessed it – they make more because they can generate a higher profit margin for the company and their own commissions with a reconditioned machine.  No problem, right?

Actually there’s a significant problem.  The sale of a new machine is much more valuable to the company – they get rated on the sales of new machines by the manufacturer, and they get rebates.  Every reconditioned machine sale actually works against them with their manufacturers.  Yet, they still need to have reconditioned machines available for their customers.  Again – he’s getting what he works for (or in this case, pays for).  The obvious solution is to change the compensation structure to compensate the salespeople based on the value of the sale to the company, which in this case is not necessarily the gross profit.

In both of these cases, the business owner was doing what’s common in their respective industries, but not what matched up with their company’s goals.  They were certainly working hard.  Some in their business would say that they were even working smart (admittedly, I wouldn’t).  But what they definitely weren’t doing was working intentionally and with the end in mind.  To do those things, you have to take a global, strategic view of your sales program.

Start with your eventual goals for the company.  How do you want your company to progress?  Define your goals for growth and profitability.  My favorite measurement, by the way, is profit dollar gain year-over-year. I like that number because it’s the only thing you can spend.  You can’t spend top line sales nor profit margin, but if you make $100,000 more this year than last, you have $100,000 more you can actually spend (or save, if you’re responsible like that).  Define where you want your business to go.

Next, break it down.  How do all the pieces fit together?  How many salespeople do you need in order to achieve those goals, and what level of performance do you need them to have?  Define your gaps, and figure out how to fill them.

Next, define your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) for every position.  Are your KPI’s matching up with what you need from the position?  If your sales manager is really a “super salesperson,” is that what you need from that position?  If not, you need to retool your KPI’s and match them up.

The point is to align all your goals and KPI’s with your needs – then work toward that with a laser focus.  In the first case we discussed, the solution for the business owner was to retool his hiring process to discover soft skills in hiring and then hire based on that.  Once that’s done, the compensation and evaluation structure needs to be aligned with the manager’s achievement in management and development, not sales production.  Finally, the salespeople need to be led to understand that the manager’s job is not to sell, but to foster the development of the salespeople.  Further, lead by example to show that everyone can learn and improve, and that the salespeople aren’t competing with the manager.

It will be hard work.  But it will also be intentional, and I have a feeling that he will get what he’s looking for.  And what he’s WORKING for.

I’ve been talking a lot lately about the need for salespeople to be memorable.  Last week, I was reminded of a funny thing that happened several years ago. I was in a business networking meeting, and we got to the point in the meeting where referrals were passed around. It’s a group of professionals from different (non-competitive) industries who get together once a week to network and further each other’s business.

To protect the innocent, I’ll not mention any names – but the insurance salesman turned to the mortgage broker and said, “I have a lead for you. One of my customers wants to refinance his home. He bought it a year or so ago, but he thinks his credit situation has improved, so he wants to see if he can get a lower rate. He didn’t know any mortgage people, so I gave him your name. Here’s his information.”  Comedy ensued.

Mortgage broker takes one look and says, “Hey, this is my lead to you! I passed this guy to you six months ago.” Immediately, there were two embarrassed faces and twelve laughing ones around the table. Most of us were glad we weren’t the mortgage broker right then. Turns out, he had written the customer’s home loan.

How does this happen? Six months ago, the mortgage broker had a relationship with the customer – or at least he thought he did. Now, the customer doesn’t even remember him. Is it possible for someone to forget the person that helped them get a home that quickly? Well, yes. In fact – as has been demonstrated numerous times – it’s possible for a salesman to think that he has had a “great” appointment with a customer, and the customer to not even remember the salesman’s name the next day!

Here’s a test you can try on your own. Next week, have someone else call back all the new prospects you met with this week. They should say that they are calling from the research department of your company, and they would like their help in gauging your company’s selling effectiveness. Ask your prospects if they remember meeting with someone from your company. Ask them if they remember the person’s name that sold to them. Ask them if they can remember anything specific about the meeting.

If you’re really good at your job, the answers will probably look like this:

• About 75% will remember meeting with someone from your company.
• Less than 50% will remember your name.
• Less than 25% will remember anything specific or unique about the meeting.

Sound depressing? Well, it is, but it isn’t. Remember, I said those are the numbers if you’re really good. For most salespeople, your numbers will be a lot lower. When I did this with a company I worked for some years ago, a few reps were remembered less than 10% of the time! What’s more amazing is that some of these reps were still making quota.

If this suggests a major problem to you, you’re not alone. Think, for a moment, about the old phrase that “sales is a numbers game.” Well, yeah. It is, kind of. The real equation of sales is this:

(Quantity of activity) x (Quality of activity) = Results.

Let’s say that, of every 10 prospects you see, you close one. Your closing ratio is 10% – probably about average. But, if only 50% of your customers remember you after your first call, that’s a pool of five, so your closing ratio is actually 20% when a customer remembers you. Therein lies opportunity. Make more customers remember you, and you’ll win more sales.

So, how do you make your prospects remember you? Since memory is individual, it’s not going to be enough to have technical mastery of sales skills, presentation skills, or your own product. You must truly tune into your buyer – and get your buyer tuned in to you. Here are a few good ways to get started:

• If your product lends itself to a hands-on, user participation demonstration, do that – and make it more fun and interesting than anyone else’s. If it’s not a hands-on product, come up with some sort of a hands-on game or activity that will get your prospect physically involved.  People remember being participants far more than they remember being spectators.
• Ask questions that are so radically different than anyone else in the industry that your prospect has no choice but to stop and think before answering. That won’t be tough – most salespeople are genuinely lousy questioners.  Remember that the Investigation phase of the Buyer’s Journey is about helping the Buyer discover his or her true needs, and this requires deep and incisive questions.  People remember what they are ASKED more than they remember what they are TOLD.  The standard questions “what would you change about your current service if you could?” have gotten so routine that clients can answer them in their sleep.
• Simple respect for the Buyer’s Journey sets you apart.  For instance, respect the Buyer’s progression through the five steps and don’t just blast sales messages.
• Use technology in innovative ways.  For instance, if a plant tour would be helpful to your sales messaging, but it’s hard to get prospects to your plant, why not create an engaging video tour?

The number one way to get a prospect to remember you is simple.  Make the sales call an enjoyable experience.  Most sales calls are pretty neutral for the customer – the “great” meeting tends to come from us, not from the customers.  Whenever you have a “great” sales call, ask yourself if your customer would call it “great.”  If they wouldn’t, you shouldn’t.

You get the idea. To start out, do the exercise and count the people that remember you. That percentage is your “memory index.” Then start working on making yourself – and your company – memorable. Keep taking your memory index every three months. Don’t let yourself become forgettable.

“Do your customers like your business model?” is the most important question of 2024.  It’s always been the most important question, really, but too many business owners ignore it.  The reality is that many companies – and indeed, some entire industries – are built around sales models that their customers either grudgingly tolerate or actively dislike.  I’m going to tell you a story about an industry where this question was actively ignored, which led to that industry literally no longer existing in the 21^st century.  It’s long but worth the read, and then I’ll give you some guidelines to analyze your own sales model.

In 1993, I had a job as the Sales Director for a regional magazine and book wholesale distributor.  I got this job – which I probably was too young and inexperienced to deserve – because I was the newly minted son-in-law of the president of the company.  My business experience to that point had been in the hypercompetitive world of car sales. A more dog-eat-dog business is hard to find.  That’s why the dynamics of this industry were so foreign to me.

In 1993, when you picked up a magazine from the rack at your local grocery or mass merchandise store, it had been delivered on a route truck from a regional distributor like the one that employed me.  In the larger stores, the route driver had done the “put up,” meaning that he had taken down last month’s issue and put up this month’s issue, and removed the returned magazines for credit.  Smaller stores just received tote boxes of magazines, and a store employee did the put up.

There were over 300 of these regional distributors.  Here’s what got me.  There was no competition.  This industry worked on a huge network of informal “gentlemen’s agreements” to not intrude on each other’s territories. The only way to expand your reach was by buying another adjacent distributor – which we did twice in the three years I was employed.  Nearly all of these businesses were multi-generational family businesses, and by 1993, were run by people who had never experienced a highly competitive market.

We also grew by “fighting the shelf wars,” or working to expand publication space in stores.  That’s what I did.  And I was good at it.  I had a lot of fun, met some great people, and gained some experiences that stick with me to this day.

The regional distributors bought through national distributors who rarely distributed any physical product.  Most of the publications were shipped direct from the publisher.  But the national distributors took their cut.

There were a couple of other small national distributors who worked outside this system, but they distributed small-circulation magazines to bookstores.  They were also the primary book vendors to bookstores, and they just shipped direct to the bookstores.  They didn’t service mass merchandise retail.

In late 1993, I went to my first industry convention.  I met other distributors.  I met people from the largest retailers.  And I met people from the publishers.  There were a number of presentations, but the one that stands out to me was from a representative of a major publisher who excoriated the industry for its business model because it was inefficient, and didn’t meet the needs of either publishers or customers.  This, of course, just made people angry.  It should have been a warning shot.

Also, the largest retailers didn’t like our model and were talking about vendor consolidation for efficiency (it cost them quite a bit to manage 300 vendors).  This was pretty much ignored.

Most of the regional distribution people were very genteel and very content.  I did notice that there were two who seemed to be taking a different look at the industry. Not coincidentally, they controlled two of the largest regional distributors and had a lot of power in the marketplace.  I spent quite a bit of time talking to them. I was mildly reprimanded for this – these guys were somewhat considered outcasts in the business, and my father-in-law didn’t want me to get a bad reputation.

When we got home, my father-in-law asked me to create a white paper on my observations of the industry and its future.  I wrote a two-page report which can be summarized thusly:

“You are all nuts. This industry is ripe for the picking.  All it’s going to take is one person (and I predicted the two most likely) who’s ready to be a complete pariah in the business. He can go to one of three large retailers and offer to take over their whole national business, maybe giving them an extra percentage point or two.  They’ll jump on it.  Then, he’ll have trucks running into everyone’s back yard with one of the top customers as an anchor.  He can send out salespeople to take more accounts.  The distributors won’t be able to fight him off, because they don’t know how to compete anymore.  They’ll be forced to either close or sell, because their business models only work if they have all the accounts in their territories.  He’ll roll up the industry like a cheap window shade.”

“Alternatively – WE can be that pariah.  We’re already one of the top 20 distributors in the country. Put me on the road.  I can win one of the big three accounts, and then I’ll be the guy going and selling the regionals.  Yeah, people will be mad at us, but we will survive and thrive.  Others won’t.  And all this will happen in the next 3-5 years, guaranteed.”

Well, my father-in-law, and other family members, patted me on the head and told me that I just didn’t “get” their business quite yet, but I’d learn.  Two years later, I was divorced and out of there (no regrets).

At about the same time that I left that business, the distributor in Dallas – one of the two I had highlighted – signed a national contract with Wal-Mart.  The rest played out exactly like I had forecast.  Two years after that, my former in-laws sold the company to him for a small fraction of what it had been worth.  They still did well financially, but not nearly as well as if they’d sold in 1994.

So, the guy in Dallas is fat and happy today, right?  Wrong. He addressed the vendor consolidation issue on the part of the main retailers, but there were still inefficiencies in the supply chain.  You still had national distributors taking a cut without really adding value, the cost of all those trucks and employees sucked up margin dollars, and the publishers and customers still didn’t love the system – even with one main vendor.

Remember those small specialty distributors that shipped direct to bookstores?  One of them figured out that he could do the same thing, only with mass market retailers, and split the margin savings three ways – some to the publisher, some to the distributor, and some to the retailer.  Ten years after dominating the industry, the guy in Dallas found himself out of business.  And to this day, that’s how magazines get to the mass market.  An entire industry of regional wholesalers is GONE.

So what happened?

A bunch of people ignored their customers and now they’re out of business.

Every day, I talk to business owners who extol the virtues of their “business models” and their “sales processes” in terms of the benefit to the business.  However, many of them find it much harder to articulate the benefits of their business model to their CUSTOMERS.  I think they just assume that the customers don’t have a choice – that their customers will continue to have to buy from them.

I’m here to tell you that this isn’t so.  Remember that everything in my story happened before the Internet and before information became so readily accessible.

All it took was one disruptor – and then another.  Someone with the guts to step outside “the way we do it” and instead focus on “the way my customers want it to be done.”

As we roll into 2024, here are five questions that you should be asking yourself.

1. Do my customers enjoy the way I do business with them?
2. Does my sales process mirror and match my customers’ Buyer’s Journey?
3. Are my people communicating with my customers in the technological platforms that they need to?
4. What parts of my business model would my customers eliminate, if they could?
5. How is my business and/or industry ripe for disruption – and can I be the disruptor?

The pace of change is such that you should be periodically reviewing these questions at least every six months.

Do your customers like your business model?  If the answer is “no,” or “I’m not sure,” it’s time to make some changes.  Don’t be like the people who ran the magazine distribution industry.

If I can help, let’s talk.

Right now, most companies have already developed their sales forecast for 2024.  Many of them will be fatally flawed, because they only take into account changes in their own marketplace and offerings, but not changes in the sales profession itself.  That’s what I’m here to talk about today.  I’ve talked about the changes in selling. I’ve done a webinar on what I see as the top four trends in selling.  Now, I’m going to humble myself just a tad.

I don’t have all the answers.  I have most of them, and I’m learning more all the time, but I don’t have all of them.  What made me realize this was an experience I had a few days ago.  At the request of one of my clients, I put together a recommended prospecting blueprint for his new sales hires (and no, you can’t have it unless you’re a coaching client of mine).   That used to be an easy task.  It’s not anymore, because prospecting, like many aspects of our great profession, is something of a moving target right now, along with others.  What I’m about to tell you about sales in 2024 is done with the knowledge that I don’t have every answer – but anyone who tells you that they do is full of it.

Big Change #1:  Prospecting must evolve.  Prospecting used to be very linear.  You dialed the phone from a quality database X amount of times.  You would get a contact (a voice to voice conversation with your target decision maker) about 1/3 of those dials.  A good prospecting talk-track would get you an appointment on about 1/3 of your contacts.  So, you’re getting an appointment on about every 9^th dial. A salesperson can dial the phone about 20 times an hour, so an hour gets you 2-3 fresh appointments.  That was pretty nice.

Now, as I’ve noted before, the contact to dial ratio is about 1/8, and everything else flows from there.  Contact to appointment ratios are about ¼, which in my opinion is because people get so many messages that they are more skeptical.  Now you’re getting an appointment on every 30^th dial.  That means that we have to redefine and rethink prospecting in order to succeed, incorporating multiple channels of contact.  That’s the topic of my next Webinar.

Big Change #2:  Customers expect more.  Your customers are carpet-bombed with information every day, and they expect you to use information to make better use of their time.  Showing up, talking about football for 30 minutes, and walking out with an order is a thing of the past.  Your customers expect you to have expertise about your product or service and to use that expertise, coupled with knowledge of their situation acquired through your great questioning skills, to help them improve their condition.

Big Change #3:  Customers expect less.  Wait, WHAT?  I said what I said.  While customers expect more from you in your use of their time, they also expect less of some things.  Customers want less meaningless pressure, less of the old sales tactics, and fewer “donut calls” to just “check in.”  Those things are for YOU, not for them.  Customers are all about their own Buyer’s Journey, and if you don’t know what that is and how to make it work for you, customers will have less of you, and you’ll have less of their business.

Big Change #4:  Hiring is different.  If you’re a sales manager, you’re probably dealing with smaller candidate pools and less responsive candidates.  That’s a simple function of supply and demand.  While the supply of quality salespeople has decreased, the demand has remained constant – which means that you have to employ more competitive practices to hire good salespeople.  I can help with that through my Hiring Assistance programs.  Your hiring must be more marketing-centric than ever, you must be responsive to good applicants, and when you have good applicants, you still have to employ a quality hiring process to vet the candidates.

You might not be excited about all of these changes – prospecting, for instance, is much tougher and more challenging – but you should embrace them.  Salespeople that embrace them will quickly gain separation from their competitors.  And if your sales forecast for 2024 doesn’t take account of these changes, you might need to revise it.  Might I suggest a Sales Audit?

Now, what hasn’t changed?  Well, there are a few things.

Questioning remains the primary sales skill.  In my 33 years in the sales profession, the most important skill is to ask great, incisive questions that make the customer think.  In fact, I teach in my Elements of Sales training that 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale depends upon the questions you ask.  Still true.  In fact, great salespeople are constantly refining and learning.

In-person sales interaction remains king.  Much like Mark Twain, the rumors of the demise of in-person interaction (face to face sales calls, networking events, trade shows, and conventions) are greatly exaggerated.  Customers still like to see YOU.  Networking events and trade shows are still big.  Some, in fact, are even bigger than they were in 2020.  Keep a focus on generating face to face sales meetings.

You can still benefit your customers.  Most of what you sell can be bought without the intervention of a salesperson – but that doesn’t mean that it should.  Your role – if you are a good salesperson who is a student of your profession and your customers – is still viable.  In fact, it might be more viable than ever, given the amount of white noise that’s out there on the Internet.  Great salespeople help their customers solve their problems by separating the wheat from the chaff.  That can and should be you.

The Overall Outlook For the Sales Profession

The old saying was, “If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve always gotten.”  That’s no longer true.  My sales forecast for 2024 is this:  Our profession is changing quickly enough that if you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’re going to get less than what you’ve always gotten.  In times of change, some companies go backwards and others go forwards.  Embracing the changes in selling, while honing your skills on those fundamentals that remain viable, is a way to gain more separation from your competitors than you’d have thought possible just a few years ago.

Now is a time to either win big or lose big.  I’ll be here to lead the way.  You’ll read about new developments as they come up.  As I learn, you’ll learn – and I’ll keep providing articles on my blog and videos on my YouTube channel to help.

And, if you’re the owner or manager of your company, maybe it’s time to take advantage of my complimentary Sales Strategy Review session.  Let’s have a great 2024, together.