This sales trend is seeing businesses really ramping up their use of social media in much more sophisticated ways. Rather than seeing social media as a tack on to the marketing budget, smart businesses are now creating their own social media departments which are working with sales, marketing and other departments to create real-time content that is engaging, relevant and interactive.
This sales trend is all about the radical shift in the sales mindset underway in organisations as prophesised by the Cluetrain Manifesto 15 years ago. Smart companies are moving from competition to collaboration, from ‘me’ to ‘we’. They are involving everyone across their business to be meaningfully connected in some way to the customers.
This sales trend highlights how the skills, knowledge and mindset of procurement professionals are being expanded to include the capabilities of highly competent solutions sales professionals.
The latest white papers, running commentary threads on LinkedIn Procurement Groups across the world, and procurement conferences and education bodies are all pointing towards procurement coming of age as a value creator and provider. No longer can procurement rest its case on ‘lowest cost’, ‘cheapest price’ or ‘supply of goods and services’; it must assume responsibility for the creation and delivery of real value beyond a price and general supply.
This sales trend will see sales strategy become the hot discipline of business in 2014 and beyond. Business leaders will work out how to move their sales operations out from under the shadow of marketing and being a purely tactical function to being a strategic operation that works across the business value chain, delivering real value and real growth.
Sales strategy will begin to be studied by those charged with managing a sales team as well as other management disciplines to ensure sales and organisational success. Along with business and marketing strategies, sales strategy will take a lead position at the C suite.
We are already even more reliant upon China for our prosperity than any comparable economy, at more than one quarter of our exports. We are China’s number one destination for foreign investment and a leading beneficiary of the education aspirations of its growing middle class.
Yet many of us remain deeply ambivalent about the world-changing economic transformation of China and underestimate our need to be prepared. Smart companies are recognising the need to develop deeper engagement with their Chinese counterparts – in universities, industries and governments. More Australian salespeople will need to study China, travel, live, work and speak Chinese.
This sales trend is seeing a new kind of salesperson emerging in our midst. Smart companies are becoming aware that they need a new kind of salesperson, especially at the higher levels of business.
Customers, particularly in the Australian market and increasingly worldwide, are looking for a collaborative, more enlightened approach to selling, where they can work with sales professionals who bring their in-depth knowledge and understanding of how solutions can be applied and who work with their customers.
For the detailed version of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2014 please go to www.salesessentials.com/shop to purchase and download your copy. You can also get complimentary downloads of the detailed Sales Trends Reports for 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010 here.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
Sue Barrett is a sales expert, business speaker, sales facilitator and entrepreneur. She founded Barrett Consulting to provide sales consulting, training, coaching and assessments.
Sue is a selling better strategist and advisor, sales philosopher and speaker, sales trainer and coach, writer and activist. Sue is chief executive of forward thinking sales advisory Barrett and online sales education and resource platform www.salesessentials.com. Barrett develops sales strategies, standards and education that help people and businesses sell better.
