THE IMPORTANCE OF AN ORGANISATIONAL SALES STRATEGY (OSS)

Following the Covid19 pandemic, the world of corporate sales & marketing has totally changed.

–  More people are involved in decision making, meaning time to win deals has elongated.

–  Companies are more risk averse due to loss aversion concerns, high interest rates and a subdued economic environment.

–  People are harder to contact to progress sales. Many decision makers now work from home and no longer answer landlines or mobiles (unless they recognise the number).

–  Buyers do their own research and approach salespeople usually much later in the sales process.

As a result of these seismic sales shifts, a new Organisational Sales Strategy (OSS) model is emerging.

Let’s breakdown some of these components of the emerging 2020’s Organisational Sales Strategy (OSS) and honestly reflect on what is really happening.

Proactive Outreach – Not only has this become much harder to do effectively, but way less of it is actually taking place. As I mentioned before, many people are working from home now and outreach phone calls are usually not accepted. This fear of getting through and subsequent high chance of rejection is dramatically reducing salesforce proactive outreach.

Event Marketing – Because of the point above, more and more meetings are taking place with target customers at industry events and group gatherings.

The challenge with these events is getting the meetings you want over a compressed time period, in which people are usually focused on selling and learning, not buying. Many event, attendees are immersed in educational content sessions and panel discussions about industry developments. It can be hard to get 1-2-1 meeting time at such events. Add in the high cost of participation for attendance and sponsorship and your sales and marketing costs can explode without the compensating amount of revenue opportunities.

Content Marketing – Because of the increased difficulty in contacting potential customers a new wave of content marketing is emerging. Large corporations are following nimble entrepreneurs onto social platforms such as LinkedIn and YouTube.

The challenge for many of these big companies is the content is often bland, not authentic and comes across as too self-promotional. Eg. We won XYZ industry award or I represented the company on this panel discussion (often pay to play).

The bottom line is despite the massive amount of time being invested in content marketing, much of which is poorly thought out, there are lots of views and likes, but little in terms of leads generated, revenues and profits. It is important to ask yourself and measure, what is my ROI from my content management investment? Do you know the leads and revenues you have actually created, compared to the time and costs invested?

Use of AI – Lots of people are talking about AI and many new experts are popping up. I’m not exactly sure where they all came from or what they studied to become experts, but that’s for another article.

The reality is, I have not seen many companies implement AI in their corporate salesforce effectively.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro artificial intelligence, but I always come back to, is use of it generating organisational revenues and profits.

Often AI is used to create bland content that doesn’t pass the human BS detector. It also often comes across as not that authentic or real. Using AI properly is just one part of a much more complex and multi staged sales process.

The reality is when AI is applied to a very thorough and structured sales process, such as the one I have developed with TRANSFORM, you realise there is still so much that needs to be done through emotion and real human connections.

The challenge for today’s organisations in a world overflowing with information, is how does the salesforce still use emotion, creativity and technology to create sales opportunities when prospective customers are engaging less and less.

To discuss implementing an Organisational Sales Strategy (OSS) for your business that delivers real revenues and profits, not just likes and shares, drop me a line at mark@markswain.com.au