Experts Reveal How to Sustain Growth Through
Disruption at the 2022 Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference,
May 17-18
Sales leaders looking to cultivate an adaptable sales
organization should rethink their current sales efforts across
three dimensions, according to Gartner, Inc. Those dimensions
include: customer understanding, customer engagement and operating
models.
During the opening keynote at the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader
Conference, taking place virtually today and Wednesday, experts
outlined how redesigning customer understanding, customer
engagement and operating models can increase commercial performance
and engagement by as much as 20% in terms of quota attainment.
“From virtual selling to inflation, the pace of unrelenting
change has had a massive impact on B2B commerce,” said Scott
Collins, managing vice president in the Gartner for Sales Leaders
Practice. “In addition to being complex, it’s also highly variable
and unpredictable, placing each of these three dimensions under
pressure.
“The majority of reps are also burnt-out. 2022 is the third
straight year of working primarily in a reactionary mode while
trying to maintain a steady stream of business in an otherwise
unsteady world.”
Customer understanding The goal of customer understanding
is to develop a comprehensive view of customers’ buying actions in
order for sellers to account for buying dynamics they otherwise
can’t see.
Yet today’s B2B buyers are expanding to include new
personalities, each with a new set of questions and challenges. The
result is unexpected, highly situational levels of complexity for
sellers and customers: Nearly 90% of sellers report they are
frequently required to respond to unexpected changes in the deals
they do, according to a survey of over 400 sellers conducted in
December 2021 and January 2022.
“The traditional buyer journey maps and playbooks previously
relied on for customer understanding are now little more than an
approximation of what a customer truly goes through,” said Collins.
“For sellers, trying to diagnose real customer purchase progress
feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”
In addition, a survey of 725 B2B buyers conducted in November
and December 2021 revealed that 72% of customers said they prefer a
“rep-free experience,” or completing their purchase without
speaking to a rep at any point due to a perceived lack of seller
relevance in achieving their specific objectives. “With so much
information available to customers digitally, sellers are no longer
the channel to customers, but a channel to customers,” said
Collins.
Gartner recommends empowering sales reps with the freedom to
diagnose and adapt to a customer’s unique context, and then empower
them to identify creative, tailored ways to advance a given deal,
customized to the specific customer scenario.
Today’s progressive sales organizations are also turning to
technology to fuel adaptability. Examples include customer
sentiment tracking, conversation intelligence and pipeline
data.
Customer engagement Many sellers describe the leadership
of their organization as “overly optimistic and disconnected” from
day-to-day selling reality, resulting in an approach focused on
activity metrics and standardized sales plays that fall short of
true customer engagement.
To move away from this, sales organizations can use three
critical tactics to reduce purchase complexity and increase
customer confidence:
- Customer verifiers: Specific, objective, observable
customer behaviors designed to accurately track a customer buying
group’s progress along a purchase journey.
- Buyer enablement: Guiding customers step-by-step through
their own complex, buying process in a way that makes them more
confident to make a large-scale purchase decision on behalf of
their company.
- Sense making: Helping customers organize, prioritize and
analyze all of the information they’re likely to encounter along a
purchase to draw better conclusions.
“The real magic happens when these tactics are applied in a
highly contextual manner specifically tailored to customers’ needs
in the moment,” said Alice Walmesley, Director, Advisory in the
Gartner for Sales Leaders Practice. “To achieve that level of
accuracy in customer engagement, sales leaders are turning to
emerging technology as a critical enabler such as real-time emotion
detection and AI.”
Operating models As the modern customer goes back and
forth between digital and human-led sales interactions, adaptable
commercial organizations need to move with equal ease between both
channels. Aligning operating models into a single, unified
organization will give reps the support they need and ensure
customers are funneled through all channels in a seamless and
transparent manner.
“Effective B2B selling has become a team sport, one which the
entire commercial team – human (sales) and digital (marketing) –
effectively represents a single face to the customer,” said
Collins. “With time, it’s possible more companies will eliminate
the distinction between sales and marketing altogether.”
Learn more in the upcoming complimentary webinar, “Gartner CSO
& Sales Leader Conference Recap: Adapt to the Future of
Selling.”
About the Gartner CSO & Sales Leaders Conference The
Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference is taking place virtually
on May 17-18, 2022, providing sales leaders with the latest
research on sales talent, customer buying behavior, account-based
marketing strategies and leveraging digital channels. Follow news
and updates coming out of the conference on the Gartner Newsroom
and on Twitter and LinkedIn using #GartnerSales.
About Gartner for Sales Leaders Gartner for Sales Leaders
provides heads of sales and their teams with the insights, advice
and tools they need to address mission-critical priorities amid
mounting pressures to drive growth through new and existing
customers. With extensive qualitative and quantitative research,
Gartner for Sales Leaders helps sales teams combat commoditization
and price-based purchasing, develop critical manager and seller
skills, elevate the value of sales interactions, unlock existing
growth potential, and optimize sales force enablement. Follow news
and update from the Gartner Sales practice on Twitter and LinkedIn
using #GartnerSales. Members of the media can find additional
information and insights in the Gartner Sales Newsroom.
About Gartner Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) delivers
actionable, objective insight to executives and their teams. Our
expert guidance and tools enable faster, smarter decisions and
stronger performance on an organization’s mission critical
priorities. To learn more, visit gartner.com.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220517006068/en/
Katie Costello Gartner + 1 571 444 1091
katie.costello@gartner.com
Matt LoDolce Gartner +1 646 675 5897
matt.lodolce@gartner.com
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