What’s New in Selling? Six TOP Trends

At Mobile Locker, we stay connected with sales leaders.

We find the best of the best identify trends and sales opportunities long before their peers. They spend time thinking about what’s ahead in terms of technology, demographics, product development and the demands of their customer base so they consistently stay ahead of the competition.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the latest sales innovations we’ve uncovered in our work with leading sales organizations, and how sales enablement can help you implement them in your organization.

Projecting into the future

Important fact: The only way to win at sports or games is to stay three moves — or more — ahead of the competition. The same is true for winning at sales.

Even though it’s not easy to do, sales leaders look beyond current conditions to identify tomorrow’s opportunities. They analyze data and trends looking to see where the world is going before it actually gets there. They’re always ready to take advantage of new opportunities when they present themselves, instead of scrambling to play catch-up.

How sales enablement helps: A sound program and system provide the data required to recognize small shifts in buying habits. These early indicators are signs of bigger changes ahead, which gives you time to plan for them.

Identifying the potential in micro markets

Marketers and salespeople often depend exclusively on large macro trends when planning for the future. This is an issue because your competitors are likely doing the same thing. Plus, you could be missing out on smaller micro opportunities that could be hiding within those bigger trends.

Top sales professionals break down markets into smaller units to find new prospects, customer segments or microsegments which can be studied in detail. Then they connect them with new product, service, package and deal offerings.

These hidden pockets of growth potential could provide revenue opportunities your company may be able to “own” and become known for. Over time, you could transform them into dependable sources of sales with little competitive interference.

How sales enablement helps. Sales enablement systems provide easy access to rich stores of data that can be studied in different levels and groupings. This can help you find micro opportunities that your competitors are missing that could turn into macro revenue streams for your firm.

Finding value in big data

Sales teams, especially those with sound sales enablement programs and systems, have an incredible amount of data available to them today, even when compared to as little as five years ago.

However, only the best, most analytical sales leaders understand what they can do with all that data. They know how to analyze it, or partner with the best analysts, so they can leverage it to make better business decisions, identify opportunities that are more likely to close and improve sales strategies.

How sales enablement helps: A program and system provides the historical data that can point toward future sales improvements and opportunities. If you’re not sure how to approach analyzing your data, the experts at Mobile Locker can point you in the right direction.

Outsourcing sales

You can’t be an expert at all aspects of selling. Most small- to mid-size businesses don’t have the staffing required to cover all parts of the sales process.

That’s why more and more businesses outsource parts of their sales operations to firms or freelancers. In some cases, they outsource the end-to-end sales process to organizations that specialize in selling. Some of these firms may understand how to sell your products and services to your customer base better than you do.

Different types of outsourced selling solutions can be effective for different types of organizations. You owe it to yourself to check out your options.

How sales enablement helps: A sales enablement system provides a common view of your sales data to you, your internal stakeholders and your outsourced sales team. This encourages internal – external collaboration and dialogue that will improve your sales over time.

Leveraging social selling

Social selling isn’t new. Sales teams have been trying to crack the code for a long time. Today, the most effective sales organizations leverage data from social media to genuinely understand their customers.

Whether someone is a buyer, decision-maker or influencer, you can watch what they respond to in different social media channels to really “get” who they are, what motivates them and when they’re approaching a trigger event that could get them to buy.

How sales enablement helps. Your sales enablement system provides ready access to the information, messages and content your sales reps need to jump into social conversations when opportunities arise. It eliminates fumbling, doubts and misses in the fast-paced world of social selling.

Encouraging closer collaboration between sales and marketing

One thing never seems to change:Sales and marketing should be closely linked together, however, the relationship between the two is often contentious, at best.

This leads to marketing NOT providing the type of support sales needs to close deals.

It’s critical to align sales with marketing so that both understand what customer segments they are targeting and the sales journey those buyers follow on the way to closing a deal. This may sound obvious, but the two functions often work in individual silos, pursuing completely different opportunities.

How sales enablement helps: Nothing contributes more to uniting sales and marketing than a solid sales enablement program and system. It encourages your sales and marketing teams to work together to map out an optimal customer experience and the sales materials to support every step of it. This ensures they’re working toward the same organizational goals and monitoring progress using the same data.

If you want to move your sales organization into the future, you owe it to yourself to meet with the experts at Mobile Locker. They can provide you with the guidance, support and systems to get you to tomorrow, today.