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    How to Thrive As a Sales Consultant or Trainer in 2022

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    If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that the world has changed rapidly over the past couple of years. The environment that sales consultants and trainers are operating in today is not the same as even a year ago, let alone five years ago.

    Some of this change has been driven by the pandemic. Some of it has been driven by technology. And some simply by changing customer needs and behaviors.

    If you’re a sales consultant in 2022, you have to be thinking one step ahead of everyone else in order to capture business and remain competitive. Here are four big challenges you’re facing, and what to do to ensure you thrive this year and beyond.

    Four challenges for sales consultants and trainers in 2022

    1. Bloated technology budgets
      Technology continues to gobble up sales department budgets. It seems there are a hundred new technologies every five minutes, each one designed to solve a different problem. Lacking a clear technology strategy, sales departments grab these up in hopes that they’ll make them more productive.

      Meanwhile, sales technologies like Salesforce offer thousands of “bells and whistles” that quickly drive the total cost of ownership of their product through the roof. Before long, departments are drowning in point pollution and managing a massive Frankenstack. They simply might not have time or money left over to invest in good consulting and training.
    2. Reinforcement and execution
      In a post-2020 world, and in the uncertain times of 2022, companies continue to scrutinize budgets more closely than ever before. They expect to see results from their investments. Unfortunately for sales consultants and trainers, no matter how good your strategies and training may be, if you can’t help execute and reinforce, you can’t prove your results.

      In some cases, you are at the mercy of how well the company itself reinforces and executes on your strategies. And if that piece fails - you take the blame.
    3. Changing customer behavior
      Customer behavior continues to change at a breathtaking rate. Often, customers themselves don’t even know how their company goes about making purchases, they don’t know what they need, and they don’t know how to go about getting it.

      Inboxes are flooded with spam, and customers are increasingly resistant to marketing-heavy content. They demand real answers and expertise that many salespeople are ill equipped to provide. This leaves sales consultants and trainers responsible for filling the gaps and providing strategies and training that adapts quickly and supports the level of expertise salespeople need to exhibit.
    4. Industry consolidation
      The flood of new sales technologies on the market every day is outmatched only by the size of the companies waiting to gobble them up. In fact, most technology start-ups begin with the goal of being swallowed by one of a few giants.

      The same thing continues to happen in the consulting and training world, with large corporations buying up everything related to sales effectiveness and offering technology-focused solutions that can be hard for smaller consultants and trainers to compete with, even when your expertise is superior.

    How you can leverage technology partnerships to thrive as a sales consultant this year - and beyond

    In order to thrive against the gorillas in your industry, sales development experts and trainers must be nimble and thoughtful in their approach, and they must be able to demonstrate results.

    The right technology partnerships can help you to overcome budget obstacles, as well as provide a complete package that includes reinforcement and execution. It can also enable you to measure your results and prove your value.

    The right technology platform allows you to build your strategies, process, and methodologies directly into daily workflows.

    Many companies start with a technology and then try to fit process, methodology, and training into the system. This results in bloated technology budgets and poor results.

    Consultants and trainers can challenge this approach and encourage customers and prospects to take a close look at their technology budget and what it’s actually doing for them. With the right technology partners, consultants and trainers can provide an alternative that actually serves the strategy rather than the other way around.

    The right technology platform should allow you to build your strategies, process, and methodologies directly into the salesperson’s (and leader’s) workflows. Large platforms like Salesforce may provide plug-ins that enable this, but they add to technology budgets and can be costly and time-consuming to implement.

    Look for a technology platform that was built to be agile and easy to customize. Membrain, for instance, was designed to make it simple to execute on a customized process and methodology, and is easy for a consultant or trainer to build on top of.

    Your technology platform partner should also make it easy to customize the way you gather and analyze data to measure your results and tailor your training. Great visuals should make it easy for you to demonstrate the value of your training directly to the customer, while also making it easy for you to optimize and improve.

    Finally, this technology partner should save your customer money on technology by providing everything you need and replacing large portions of their bloated Frankenstack. In this way, you can reclaim some of that technology budget for your training and consulting, even as you collect residuals from your partnership.

    Partnering with Membrain allows you to be agile in response to changing customer behavior, while providing a complete package that is superior to that offered by many of the big consolidated firms. We would love to speak with you about our partnership program - reach out to schedule a time.

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    George Brontén
    Published May 25, 2022
    By George Brontén

    George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

    Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn