Owners of companies often ask me, ‘We have the best equipment and workflow, why can’t my sales team sell more?’

 

There are no easy answers to this question. Investing in an effective approach to motivate your sales team and create a company culture to support sales enablement can drive revenue growth.

 

B2B selling has changed forever. What will it take to motivate your sales team?

 

Selling labels and labeling technologies is not about the quality of the labels you print or even how fast you deliver them – it is about how your customer feels about your company and if they want your products and services again. It’s about overall customer experience.

 

B2B selling today

 

In the last four years buyers of labels, print and other B2B services have adopted many new habits. Buyers are doing more research on their own before engaging a salesperson. On average, they are 60 percent through the buying process before salespeople even find out about a job or project. Buyers are more comfortable searching on their own for information. And they trust online information and reviews. Many buyers believe they don’t need B2B salespeople to get information they can find through an internet search or AI chat.

 

Consensus buying is here to stay. Gartner research has tracked B2B buying trends for years. In 2019, the average number of decision makers involved in a B2B purchase was 5.4 stakeholders, in 2021 it increased to 6.8 stakeholders. And the average number of decision-making stakeholders swelled to 15 to 17 people in 2022.

 

With work from home and more online meetings, it’s easy to invite more people to meetings. But that also means that it is incredibly difficult for a salesperson to identify all the decision makers and then map out a strategy for each individual preferences and their motivators driving the decision process. It’s more difficult for salespeople to determine the primary decision criteria when there are many influences in the buying process. Consensus decision making means a team – not one person – is responsible for the outcome if things go wrong. Top sales performers understand that they must provide options that create a safety net for new customers making buying decisions.