It’s certainly no surprise that the landscape of sales is changing dramatically. Neil Rackham of SPIN selling talks about the new landscape for sales and the outlook is not pretty. Transactional business is quickly being squeezed through the hiring of low cost offshore groups, as well as technology and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.
It should be noted that Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, a big data company in Palo Alto, was recently interviewed and made a compelling statement that most technologies are replacing jobs while his technologies are creating new jobs. We need to heed this because lower level jobs are going away and there will be fewer high-level positions.
The traditional sales model from which we have recognized up to 80% of our business is moving to the transactional sale and the higher end business is going to demand a consultative sales approach. This approach is going to shed light on the skills – or lack thereof – of today’s sales professionals. So it’s time to ask yourself:
Do you have the skills to connect with executives in order to gain access to their team?
This is highly critical because only through these connections will you be able to do some discovery to map their processes, come back with an understanding of their business challenges and opportunities, and, most importantly, prove where and how you can add value. This Trojan Horse method will be a required skill for the next generation of sales professionals.
Learn the key steps to make yourself and your team more valuable at the executive level; Read the complete article on SalesPOP and leave us a comment.