Buyers today are more hyper-educated than ever. Even before approaching a salesperson, they have spent hours researching products and getting a general idea of the solutions available. And though the buyer's role has changed over the years to be more informed, companies have not altered their selling approach.
For a company to be successful, however, its sales approach must evolve.
Qvidian recently released results from our annual research initiative that surveyed hundreds of executives and sales leaders from various industries, markets, and company sizes to assess the changing objectives and challenges facing sales organizations.
We identified three top challenges facing organizations this year.
Challenge 1. Sales Rep Ramp-Up
According to the report, 36% of organizations find "ramping up new sales reps takes too long" as one of the top reasons why their teams are failing to reach their quota goals.
Unlike other roles, sales is one of the only jobs where you hire somebody with the expectation that you'll lose money over the first six months. This results in not only organizations losing money but also in adding pressure to sales leaders.
At the root of this problem is how organizations approach both onboarding and delivering new reps the resources and guidance they need when they need it. The research also indicated that on average, a new sales rep takes 7-9 months to be fully productive.
There are two main reasons why the sales rep ramp-up period is as long as it is:
- The fire hose effect
This occurs during onboarding when sales reps receive information faster than they can process it while not having the proper context to apply it. Instead of implementing a strategic training and ramp-up program, sales leaders are still resorting to "info dumping" on new hires. - Disconnected systems
A whopping 80% of companies that rated ramping up new reps as very important to reaching quota attainment also reported that their systems are not connected. This leads to a disorganized flow of content and resources, especially for new hires.
The solution is for organizations to integrate systems like CRMs, coaching tools, sales enablement, and content management with a complete end-to-end sales execution strategy. That helps give new sales reps the context they need to be successful in deals earlier and thus improve ramp-up times.
Challenge 2: Personalization and Communicating Value
Sales teams are not meeting quotas in large part because they are not personalizing the buyer journey and communicating value at every turn. Some 55% of the organizations indicated that the reason for this is that they struggle to identify the tailored selling content among all the materials they have.
We are all well aware that the buying process has changed. Buyers are more informed, more prepared, and no longer entering into a conversation with a salesperson without a basic idea of the solutions available.
