The tactics, strategies, and practices of sales are constantly changing, and understanding how and where to adopt those changes into your sales strategy is critical to see success. So, on today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by LinkedIn Senior Content Manager Sean Callahan to go over the seven sales trends identified in the 2021 LinkedIn Sales Report.
Trend One: Virtual Selling is good for sellers and even better for buyers
- Buyers find it easier to buy remotely because they don’t have to worry about finding meeting times or organizing physical logistics; it can all happen from the comfort of home.
Trend Two: Remote Working is now a part of everyday life.
- While some companies are going back to the physical office, sales organizations and managers must adjust to remote working – it is now a fact of life.
Trend Three: Sales organizations prevent sellers from putting buyers first.
- While 65% of sellers say they put their buyers first, only 23% of buyers say sellers put them first.
- There are a certain number of things that you can do to be buyer-first, like offering free content, training, and being transparent about pricing and other product details.
- Only around 40% of organizations support these practices. And some of the suggested reasons organizations aren’t allowing these practices are limited budgets, not having the proper skills, and a focus on short-term results rather than long-term sustainability.
Trend Four: Six sales behaviors kill deals
- Delivering misleading information about a product (pricing or otherwise)
- Not understanding the company and its needs
- Not understand their own product or service
- Not understanding their competitor’s products and services
- Affiliated with an untrustworthy brand
- Repeated cold calling or emailing
Trend Five: Sales technology is a key pathway to building trust
- Only 40% of buyers describe sales as trustworthy, yet 89% consider their specific salespeople as a trusted advisors
- The takeaway? The sales industry is seen as untrustworthy, but the individuals who work with buyers are seen differently.
Trend Six: Data is more crucial than ever
- While partly because of Covid, salespeople might find it more challenging to get in front of people and ask questions. Instead, you have to use aggregated data to learn what you need.
Trend Seven: Both buyers and sellers are ramping up their use of LinkedIn
- 74% of sellers are committed to expanding their LinkedIn network
- 51% of sellers plan to write more articles
- 40% share much more third-party content
- 36% share more of their own company’s content
How can people find and download the full report? By visiting lnkd.in/stateofsales2021. To get in contact with Sean, connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at scallahan@linkedin.com.
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Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.