TLDR: Traditional B2B sales is broken. Deal dynamics today are exponentially more complex and sales reps have less influence and control over the sales process today than they did ten years ago. Operationalizing a high-performing co-sell motion with your partners is the key to a successful sales transformation in 2024.
Traditional B2B sales is broken. It’s been broken for a while, but the market volatility and slowdowns in corporate purchases last year masked two bigger problems facing every B2B sales team. Now that so many sales reps are failing to hit their quota, and so many sales teams are failing to hit their targets, it’s time to acknowledge two things:
- Deals are exponentially more complex
- Buyers don’t want to talk with sales reps anymore
I’m going to focus on the first issue now, and share the research and reasoning for the second next week.
At least 3 non-competitive companies are involved in every deal
Deal dynamics today are exponentially more complex and sales reps have less influence and control over the sales process today than they did ten years ago. The typical buyer today is making their decisions based on:
- How products work with their existing technology stack
- Whether or not a new solution is right for their company
- Which specialist will help them get up and running and support them over time
- Which cloud credits they can use for each purchase
- Which supplier they can buy through
Most technology deals now involve at least two or three other vendors, a few service providers that already have relationships with the account, the cloud platform companies trying to influence where systems run, and both direct sales reps and resellers vying for airtime with the buyer.
Each additional company considered, evaluated, and involved in a purchasing decision increases the level of coordination required by your sales rep.
You can’t win a football game with your quarterback blindfolded
The process of identifying and pulling in each of the other sellers, from each of the companies at the right time, is almost impossible today. Sales reps are expected to be the quarterback for each deal without knowing the names or contact information for everyone on their teams. I bet most people reading this have played this painful game of telephone and unanswered emails. It’s so hard to figure out the right person at a partner that can help with a deal in the moment that matters. I know I have many times.
Traditional CRM and sales tools aren’t built for external sales collaboration
Companies have invested millions in training, enablement, and software to make sales teams more productive. But despite all these investments over the past 10 – 20 years … sales reps are struggling to hit their quotas and executives are waking up to the idea that their approach to selling needs to change.
Here’s the issue – the foundational sales system, your CRM, was never designed for co-selling. Every sales team uses a CRM system to manage their customers, prospects, opportunities and forecasts. CRM is great for managing pipeline and keeping track of the sales activities from everyone inside your company that’s involved with the deal. But CRM was never designed to let sales reps collaborate with people from outside your company. Team selling in the past meant your sales reps, your sales engineer, your industry expert, a product specialist. But it never included external partners.
Sales transformation is now a top priority
CEOs and CROs now know that companies need to fundamentally change how they sell.
That’s why so many companies are now realizing that they need a total sales transformation initiative and must move quickly to empower their sales teams to win deals with complex dynamics.
Co-selling is the key to sales transformation success
Co-selling is the act of collaborating with sellers at other companies to influence and accelerate sales deals. Every B2B company I talk with says “yeah – we co-sell”, but when I dig into it, what they’re really doing are just random acts of co-selling.
At PartnerTap we know that operationalizing a high-performing co-sell motion with your partners is the key to a successful sales transformation in 2024. But it’s not easy. And it’s not possible without the right data, automation, and co-sell software.
Next, check out Sales is broken part 2: Buyers don’t want to talk with Sales Reps.
In the next few weeks, we will be sharing more about what it takes to build a customer-centric partner program and the sales transformation imperative for 2024. In the meantime, I recommend watching the first part in our Co-Sell Journey webinar series with Raegan Wilson, MBA from Spur Reply and Maria (Lueck) Chien from Forrester.