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Go with the idea that your prospects have already visited your website. They've read your pages. They've read your blog posts. They've asked Google what Google thinks about your company and your products and your brand. 3 Super-Common Struggles of B2B Sales Teams. I'm Joshua Feinberg from SP Home Run. And I want to talk with you today about the many ways that B2B sales teams struggle for many different reasons. I'm doing this specifically to help these teams and their companies succeed and progress towards their growth goals. To be able to first figure out the root cause and diagnose what's really going on before you can proceed with the potential solution. So in this short video, we're going to look at three of the most common struggles that B2B sales teams face. And just as importantly, what you can do to turn those struggles into your opportunities. But before we do that, please take a moment to Subscribe to this channel and ring the notification bell. So you can be notified when new videos just like this become available. First up, organize and track incoming leads or how you organize and track incoming leads. As part of the research and decision- making process, prospects now look for answers to their biggest questions by using search engines, social media sites, and review websites. This is a big, big change in buyer behavior and it has massive implications to your B2B sales team's playbook. When your company's demand generation is thinking about firing on all cylinders, your company will be able to start to get lots of inbound leads. Generally, most of these incoming leads will be with people that are just starting to research their particular problems, their struggles, or a goal that they're trying to achieve. In other words, they're going to be in the awareness stage of the buyer's journey. Even when you think about these incoming leads and they're coming from the right kinds of companies that get your sales team excited and they're in the right location, and maybe even you have the right person at that particular company. These prospects are in learning mode. They're just starting to figure things out. So the sales reps that are most effective at this stage tend to be really good at putting on their teacher's hat, positioning themselves as subject matter experts and trusted advisors. By simply sharing and offering these prospects help to navigate their research process, sales reps engaging at this stage will build rapport, earn a seat at the table as a trusted advisor on the prospect's side of the table, and build the relationship equity that they'll need to be able to lean on later on as the prospect progresses through their research and decision-making process throughout their buyer's journey. These relationships in the right context will do wonders to stack the decks in your favor in terms of ultimately being able to inform the prospect's buying criteria -- the way that they balance their different options and ultimately make sure that you're able to be involved very actively in opportunities in the later stage of the sales process in the latest stage of their purchase decision. So by working with hundreds, potentially maybe even thousands of prospects from different companies at different stages of the buyer's journey, there are a lot of details for you to keep track of. And prospects have very high expectations for you and your sales team. In the modern buyer's journey, they want you to be available when they want you to be available. And they also want to make sure that you remember all of the details that they share with you so they don't have to repeat themselves again to you or anyone else from your sales team. So, to sell effectively as possible, sales teams need to be helpful throughout how prospects are navigating and organizing all this. And you need to be able to track your incoming leads and what they're thinking about, what is causing them to be interested in speaking with you in the first place, what their concerns are, what's the business value they see from this, how they fit in with their team, and how the team fits in with the rest of the organization. You're going to need some way to be able to keep track of all this. You're going to need to be able to figure out a way to prioritize your efforts to spending time with prospects that are the best fit that are showing the highest signs of interest and showing recency and opportunities that tend to be in the later stages of the decision making process, getting you to closed-won. So that you can work even more productively. So when all your reps are on the same team are aligned, and rowing in the same direction with the same playbook. This in general helps to make your brand stronger and ensures that you gain the leverage that you need to be successful as a B2B sales team in this environment. So first and foremost, it's critical that you organize and track your incoming leads. Next up, you need to get your marketing and sales teams aligned on roles and responsibilities. This is a huge struggle that so many B2B organizations have. One if you get right, unlocks an enormous growth opportunity from your company on one that, if you ignore -- or get wrong -- can really cause your growth rate to slow to a crawl and provide, for lack of a better word, a crappy customer experience. So in the modern buyer's journey, most prospects are just doing tons of self-directed research on their own, using again search engines, social media, and review websites. Prospects are downloading content. They're listening to podcasts. They're watching videos, reading blog posts, and attending webinars to gather all the information that they feel that they need, which helps prospects stay in control of the purchase process. Let's not mince words. It's about prospects being able to take control of their buying decision. This is very different than how prospects research and made their purchase decisions recently as 10 years ago. So as a result, it's not uncommon to find that prospects are often 60% 70% 80% of the way through their decision-making process before they are open to having a conversation with someone from your sales team. And it can be challenging for old school, traditional B2B sales teams to use an obsolete playbook from 10 years ago or more in this kind of environment. But it's also an excellent opportunity. It's a really, really big opportunity for sales teams that are able to update their approach to be more relevant to the way that modern buyers want to purchase from your company. In this context, marketing teams are the ones that will have the most impact in the first 60% 70% 80% of that buyer's journey. It's a huge part of the buyer's journey where sales teams using a traditional sales playbook are no longer welcome, but marketing teams with educational resources that are able to position your company, your brand, your team members as subject matter experts, and trusted advisors, they can win that critical mindshare. So as a result, these high performing sales teams need to be able to work really closely with their colleagues in marketing to have strong alignment between the two teams. So start by discussing the different roles and responsibilities that each team will play. For example, how many qualified leads a month does marketing need to be providing to sales? And in return, how quickly does sales promise to get to those qualified leads? To review them, to make the first contact, and follow up a certain amount of times in a certain number of days to make sure that they're doing their part to take best advantage of this great asset of attention and educated prospects that's in front of them. Based on the great inbound lead generation, content, thought leadership that the marketing team is delivering for the sales team. These promises, which may sound a little bit like wedding bells. "I solemnly swear to," and usually get turned into a document -- formalized into a service level agreement, an SLA. And if you're from a technology-related company like IT services or SaaS or infrastructure or something like that, probably quite familiar with the idea of an SLA. But SLAs can also be a really powerful framework, a simple one or two page document that gets everyone on the same page about the roles and responsibilities between marketing and sales. The third super-common struggle, challenge that B2B sales teams face has to do with how they engage prospects. So let's talk briefly about what your sales team can be doing to more effectively engage prospects and locate helpful, relevant content to share with those prospects. This is really a big deal to better support prospects that just are super hungry for helpful educational content early on in their buyer's journey and making sure that your sales team has a way to be relevant in how they insert themselves into that research process. Teams also at the same time often struggle to locate this helpful educational content as quickly as they need to, to be able to get it in the hands of the right prospects in a timely fashion without being a big time or productivity drain. So because prospects no longer need to speak with sales teams to gather information, effective sales reps reposition themselves more as teachers or aspire to have the true consultative doctor/patient relationship. With this positioning, sales reps need to be able to deliver the goods and have a much more effective way of engaging with prospects to avoid being seen as just a gatekeeper to doling out information or order-taker; some of the less flattering terms that have been thrown around from time to time about how prospects perceive sales teams. Most of these interactions will focus on one of two areas. Answering questions that prospects can't find the answers to elsewhere. In other words, go with the idea that your prospects have already visited your website. They've read your pages, they've read your blog posts. They've asked Google what Google thinks about your company and your products and your brand. And they've read what other people are writing about it. They've asked questions on social media sites. They've read review sites. Make sure your sales team understands that reality and is prepared to answer the difficult questions at an expert level. Second, your sales team needs to be prepared to share unique insights that are especially valuable for these kinds of companies, these kinds of personas in a certain kind of role in a certain kind of company at a certain stage of their buyer's journey. So in other words, these should be designed. These questions are designed to get prospects thinking about areas that they ought to be thinking about but haven't yet quite connected the dots on something that they need to prioritize. And how do your sales reps know this? Because you've invested in doing a tremendous job with building unique customer insight to know this kind of prospect better than they even know themselves. The pattern recognition. Because of that, you're able to share unique insight that's often 2 3 steps ahead of where they are to impress upon them that Wow. This team really knows their study. It's designed to get them thinking go, Yeah, you're right. I hadn't really thought about that. Thanks for sharing that. That's hugely helpful for us to know. So most of your success with this approach is going to come down to diagnosing a prospect's needs and prescribing a set of treatments. These expert recommendations often include sharing thought leadership resources that are relevant to who they are, the kind of company they're with, the kind of role they're at, where they are in the journey. So members of your sales team really do need to have access to. They need to have the ability to be able to locate these thought leadership resources as rapidly as possible so they can get them in front of the prospects. How to make all of this happen consistently and at scale, Your sales team needs both a CRM system and sales productivity tools that give them superpowers. The goal is to make it easier to engage with prospects, in various ways, including live chats, emails, phone calls, and video conferencing. And finally, and just as important, your sales team needs to be able to have a documented resource library that makes it easy to get their hands on the right content at the right time within a matter of seconds. What is your B2B sales team doing right now? And what do they struggle with the most? Let me know in the comments section below. And if you're looking for some one-on-one assistance with trying to figure out how your team can overcome some of these super- common sales struggles, feel free to look me up on LinkedIn. Send me a quick note about what you're looking for help with, and we may be able to work together on a one on one basis. I'm Joshua Feinberg from SP Home Run. And I wish you great success in helping your sales team being able to overcome some of these most common struggles that get in the way of them being able to achieve their goals.