The Sales Snapshot: Integrating Sales With Important Organizational Functions

In today’s buying economy, the connected B2B buyer uses a multitude of resources to make their final buying decisions. In addition to sales conversations, they’re using social media, online content, recommendations and references as part of their decisions.  DemandGen’s 2014 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey showed:

• 64% of respondents said vendor’s content had a significant impact on final purchasing decision
• 66% of buyers are using more sources to research and evaluate purchase decisions
• 46% create a short list of vendors before their first communication with a salesperson

Your buyers are consuming more information than they ever have before. Their expectations have changed. They are looking for value in their vendor relationships. As a result, your sales organization needs a process behind continuously creating and capturing value for your customers. It is more important than ever to understand how “sales” is a function of every role in your organization and should be integrated in key business functions. For today’s Sales Snapshot, we pulled together three articles that cover opportunities for sales synergy.

1. Sales And Strategy

This article published on Harvard Business Review’s blog points out the dangers in setting goals without input from sales, as well as the dangers of training salespeople without consideration of overall business goals.

In many organizations, it has become a common practice for executive planners to sit locked away in an “ivory tower” of sorts, setting business growth goals without truly understanding the day-to-day variables affecting their sales team’s ability to deliver on those goals.

While it’s important to stay out of the weeds during strategic deliberations, if there is no way to receive feedback from frontline sellers, you miss a valuable opportunity to close the gap between goals and successful execution.

2. Sales And Technology

In this report about technology’s effect on selling, Aberdeen Group poses the question, “Would you buy from a 20th century sales rep?”

Today’s buyers expect a seamless experience between their day-to-day lives and their interactions with an organization. This makes the connected buyer far less likely to purchase from a company that is “behind the times.”

As new technology is introduced at an ever-increasing pace, it is becoming more and more necessary for sales organizations to remain up-to-date with current technology in order to maintain market relevance, do their job more effectively, and gain insights into valuable data that has traditionally been only available to marketers.

3. Sales And Customer Service

Best-in-class sales organizations understand that, for the connected buyer, a strong customer experience is one of the most important factors in their decision-making process.

The amount of value you place on delivering an excellent customer experience will ultimately determine whether your organization stands out from the competition, or is just another company paying lip service to “great customer service.”

This post from salesforce.com offers fifty inspirational quotes that remind us how every interaction with a customer or prospect is an opportunity to move them closer to the sale.