That bright, shiny object might be rustier than you think.
If you’re researching the latest and greatest sales trends, you just might fall victim to the bright-shiny-object syndrome. Trends mean nothing unless you include your buyer in your research. Just because certain sales prospecting techniques are all the rage, doesn’t mean they’re right for you or for your buyer.
Sales productivity tools are everywhere, but do they really enhance productivity? There’s technology to generate leads online, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, social media and document automation, and search engine optimization. Most of these are table stakes today, but unless sales prospecting techniques and technology actually help you prospect and close deals, they’re more distractions than assets.
So, how do you decide which tech trends are worth the money and your team’s precious prospecting time?
How to Evaluate Sales Prospecting Techniques and Technology
My advice? It’s pretty simple, really. Decide what your buyer cares about and choose only the tools to enhance your productivity. Follow those trends and forget the rest … at least for now.
Janice Mars shares similar advice (and then takes it a few steps further) in her post, “How to Adopt the Latest Sales Trends without Driving Yourself Crazy.” She writes:
Being an old timer in sales and sales management, I have had to always keep up with trends in order to be relevant to my buyers. Big data, AI, machine learning, video, social selling, account-based anything, and virtual reality are all the rage. But how do you know what to incorporate, what to disregard or backburner, and/or what to put off for a while and for how long?
Implementing too much change at once is not only typically difficult but can be risky and costly as well. It’s best to simply augment what you’re currently doing with some of these new sales trends IF, and only if, it will actually help your sales process and/or your buyers’ buying process.
Mars lists three more criteria to help sales leaders choose which sales trends to follow. Read the rest of her article for more.
Is Your Team Focused, or Are They on Facebook?
Social media is often the biggest tech distraction of all for salespeople. If your team is trying to generate leads online via LinkedIn and other social sites, they’re most likely wasting time and annoying prospects.
Help them understand how to balance technology with actually talking to people. Check out my eBook—“Facebook and Face Time Matter: The Role of Technology in Sales”—and learn more about my sales presentation, “Social Media Is All About the Social.”
