Happy World Greatness Day! Today we celebrate all the great salespeople out there who have mastered the art of convincing people to buy things.

In today’s Follow Up:

• The 2023 State of Selling 🚨 

• Sales in the news 🗞️

• Sales weapon of the day 🛠️

• Cool jobs at cool companies 📞 

• Chart of the day 📈 

Sales Fact of The Day

Selling Has Changed in 2023

Salesforce and CRM go together like peanut butter and jelly. You can’t think of one without thinking of the other. After all, their stock ticker is literally $CRM.

Salesforce is used by more than 150,000 companies and is the digital scoreboard for most sales teams.

With all of this access to sales teams, they just finished their 5th annual “State of Sales” study. The study surveyed over 7,700 sales professionals across 38 countries, to understand wtf is going in on sales.

The 26-page report covers all things sales, but as always, your 5ft 11in (can dunk on a 9ft rim), sales bestie is here to tell you everything you need to know in less than 3 minutes.

But before you set the stopwatch, check out this quote from the Salesforce EVP of Sales, on the current sales landscape.

Salesforce breaks the report into 4 sections covering the sales rep’s experience and the strategies they’re using to hit quota.

1. Maximizing impact in a challenging environment

This is code for: “Growing revenue is really hard now, so we’re shifting our focus to profitability and doing more with less.”

69% of sales reps say selling is harder right now. Economic factors such as supply chain issues, inflation, and shifting regulations are forcing buyers to tighten budgets and sales leadership to take fewer risks.

Instead of targeting 10x growth, they are concentrating on slower, dependable growth.

Why you should care: To be successful in this economy, you need to adapt. In uncertain times, proven strategies are more reliable than taking big swings on high-risk opportunities.

Some low-risk strategies for b2b sales teams include working closely with other internal teams, cross-selling and upselling existing customers, and improving sales data.

Prioritize the easy wins. Hit home runs in the next market cycle.

2. Meeting buyers where they are

Buyers now expect their sales reps to be Jake from State Farm and show up where they need them.

Where are buyers meeting their reps?

Online → 57% of buyers prefer to engage with companies through digital channels.

The average company is using 10 different sales channels to reach prospects. Top-performing sales teams are engaging with buyers across multiple channels like chat support, online portals, mobile apps, etc.

But adding another channel or increasing online presence isn’t the top priority for sales leaders. It’s cross-functional alignment.

Cross-functional alignment is sales leaders' #1 tactic for driving growth.

Sales teams need to collaborate with sales ops, marketing, CS, etc., to give buyers a smooth experience across every channel.

Why you should care: Buyers need to feel like they are working with one team (not 7 teams within one company). Sales teams need to focus on working closely with every other team involved in the sales process, to ensure the customers aren’t receiving a fragmented experience.

3. Sales Ops is important

Sales operations is the production team behind sales reps.

They’re the behind-the-scenes crew helping you do your job better (but only if you let them).

In 2020, 54% of sales leaders said sales ops were key for their strategy. Now that number is 65%.

A major problem is that reps only spend 28% of their week actually selling. The rest is filled with activities like updating Salesforce, creating proposals, and prospecting.

Sales teams are using an average of 10 different tools to close deals (which is way too many), and 94% of sales orgs want to consolidate their tech stack this year.

Why you should care: Efficient sales teams win. The top sales teams utilize sales ops to do this. Sales ops were ignored when times were easy, but now they’re more important than ever.

4. Sales Teams are under the microscope

Sales teams are turning over faster than Denny’s pancakes.

Nearly 1 in 4 reps are either looking or planning to look for a new job within 12 months.

So how can companies retain their top salespeople?

2023 is all about doing more with less. Retaining your top sales reps and empowering them to create more output will separate high-performing sales teams from the average ones.

Why you should care: Coaching, training, and empowering sales reps with the right knowledge and tools needs to be a major area of focus for sales leaders in 2023.

Reps that receive weekly 1v1 coaching are more likely to hit quota, but only 53% of leaders are using coaching tools.

Chart of The Day:

🏢 Offices are still empty 🏢 

Reader Review of The Day ✍️ 

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