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[Music] hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of the sales think tank from LinkedIn the show that brings you sales thought leadership from sales industry experts my name is Jack McCone sales director for emea at LinkedIn sales Solutions and I am delighted to be your host today in this episode we'll be discussing the state of sales in the United Kingdom where it's been where it's at and more importantly where it's going LinkedIn recently published our annual research report the state of sales which surveyed around 3 000 B2B buyers and sellers in the UK taking the nation's pulse of salespeople and unearthing a host of interesting findings for us to mull over today and joining me to tackle this topic are a number of sales industry experts from LinkedIn now before I let them introduce themselves to you I've got one or two small housekeeping items to mention firstly a recording of this show will be available afterwards on the LinkedIn sales Solutions website and our social channels and secondly and more importantly we have got a team in the background ready to answer any questions you have today so please drop them into the Q a box on your viewing console and we will get back to you get involved let's keep it nice and interactive for everybody now without further Ado let's get familiar with our panel of experts for today's episode and here at LinkedIn we like to kick things off with a little Icebreaker and that is to ask our guests to tell us something that is not on their LinkedIn profile first I will go to you Paul hi Jack um what's not on my LinkedIn profile well most recently in front of mine for me is that just two weeks ago at the end of August I completed my first ever triathlon now I I got a stress it's a Sprint Triathlon and you can you can take out the word Sprint and replace it with the word baby uh as in the baby Triathlon still Triathlon but I am nonetheless proud now it was very short in every aspect of it but uh it was just something I got in my head I wanted to try and uh nice behind me now thankfully so what was the existence of this so is this 750 meter swim uh 20 kilometer bicycle ride and a five kilometer run so still a little bit serious I'm getting tired just thinking about that that's good okay very interesting Paul well played thank you and if we can go to London to you Becky hey Jack and hi everybody in the room I'm delighted to be here today thank you for having me um for those of you that don't know me uh my name is Becky schnaufer and I head up linkedin's Talent Solutions business in the UK now Talent Solutions covers uh multiple aspects of an employee life cycle from hiring Learning and Development right the way through to retention um but that's for something that's not on my LinkedIn profile in my youth I say youth I was an avid footballer um played a lot of football so the last few weeks and months of the women's UEFA cup has made for amazing um watching with the final being absolutely exceptional so uh yeah I was there cheering for the lionesses and um probably living my best life over the last couple of months seeing so much uh women's football being played and being broadcast on the Telly a former Premier League footballer Becky and a Trailblazer for what we are seeing go on in the women's game today I am suddenly a lot less impressed by Paul's Triathlon fantastic uh Shane uh tell us a little bit about who you are and something not on your LinkedIn profile thanks Jack and hi to everyone I'm Shane and I manage our economic graph research and insights team based here in Dublin that covers the emea region and our job is to use the date and insights from linkedin's economic graph to explain what's going on in the world of work and how that aligns with global and Country economic Trends and I find memories of living in the UK and one of the things on my LinkedIn profile when I was in the UK was that I doubled in a bit of amateur Dramatics culminating in a role that was quite Typecast as an Irish jockey and looking at me now you probably assume that must have been really a stress the imagination to imagine me as an Irish jockey but there you go that was needs most I think at the time ah fantastic so you're well Adept at the studio setting and uh look you transformed yourself into a jockey and now into an economist a man of many talents trade absolutely very good at convincing people of what I'm saying that's the important the important line yeah fantastic well if I can get into the questions today then guys uh I'll start with Paul and Becky we have seen a lot of change through the pandemic in the world of work and in our industry in sales specifically what do you see as the most positive changes that have come through this time well let me go first then um I would say for me the most positive outcome so far has been the demise of undifferentiated high volume cold Outreach uh even more so today post pandemic that is a less appropriate way of engaging your potential customers and your customers than it was before simply throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks just doesn't work anymore the not least of which not least of the reasons for which is that the wall is gone right the wall is moved yeah what we've got is uh 75 percent of buyers in the UK say that they want to work remotely at least part of the time nearly two-thirds of them are already working remotely yeah so they're not sitting at the end of a fixed line telephone number they're not sitting in an office that you can come to visit any longer so you have to be demonstrating a deep understanding of your buyer's circumstances as you initiate that initial connection and if you don't you're you're dead in the water absolutely and we have you know in our report this year top performing buyers have been telling us exactly that and and we talk about top performing buyers as I was doing over 140 of their quota right sellers sellers sorry thank you our top performing sellers who we see is doing over 140 of quota they are telling us exactly what you just said so 82 percent of them are saying they never reach out to anybody anymore without doing research first and I think that's good for buyers it's good for sellers it's good for everybody really and I agree with you that that Genie is out of the bottle Becky what do you see I'm so much so much good stuff said there um I'm probably just going to be saying very similar things but I think for me it the whole last couple of years has given um the world of cells the time to Pivot you know we we could all see that buyers needs were shifting that they wanted a different journey and experience um but the transformation of how we sell wasn't happening at the pace needed by our clients um the pause that the pandemic initially gave but it made us all have to rethink both on the buyers and the seller size I think for the sellers it afforded us the opportunity to dig deeper to lean into digital tools and Data Insights more readily and for the buyer I think it helped them become more selective to do more research and demand more partnership and thought leadership from their sales Partners yeah it was a difficult time you know make no mistake um but I think for the in the world of sellers and buyers it kind of made us all up our game yeah absolutely I could I couldn't agree more I you know I think a few of us in this room are well shall we say not Millennials and and working in this industry for a long time have never seen so much change as we have seen in the last couple of years it's gone it's gone really quickly um if I can if I can go to you Shane you know the economist probably the smart guy in the room uh we might say uh and if you can keep it simple for for all of us how do you see the macro economic outlook for the United Kingdom affecting the sales industry over the coming year or two and and what is the LinkedIn data telling us well Jack I guess the context for a lot of what we're seeing in the UK macroeconomic Outlook at the moment is sort of glass half full glass half empty sort of approach it would take the glass half empty approach first of all we know that you know the British economy has shrunk by 0.1 in the in the last quarters reported we know that inflation is outstripping uh wage growth at the moment as well the bank of England is obviously uh previewed an interest rate rise that has been announced recently but then on the other side the the equation the glass half full side which is where LinkedIn data gives a really unique Insight we see that employment is strong in the UK the unemployment rate in the UK is 3.8 that's really low in a historical in a historical context but if we dig below that and look exactly what's happening on our platform and what the LinkedIn data is telling us we know that hiring is up and there was meteor meteoric rise in hiring last year immediately after the lifting of restrictions we're seeing that still maintain really strong levels really solid levels of employment in the economy but over June and July we're seeing it start to slow and that might be previewing some of the general sentiment out there around the direction which the British economy is going more importantly when we look at those applications to jobs that are taking in place in the platform we see that for the first time in nearly 10 months it there are more applicants for a job on LinkedIn than it would have been previously and there are more applicant more applicants are doing more applications as well for the first time in 10 months as well so showing that it's getting a bit busier it's getting a bit harder there still is a lot of vacancies around they're not quite the record level highs they were a few months ago but they are pretty high so there is you know scope for looking at this indicator of what's happening in the labor market as a general direction of the economy but at the moment the labor market is pretty strong and how that dials into the sales industry then is when firms take this Outlook of where they're going to go over the next three to five years where are they going to make their spending and that's where value needs to be created they are going to make tough decisions they're going to make informed decisions about where the best place to spend is and that value and that value proposition is what's really important to the sales industry as well very interesting it's it's it's a developing picture right now very much so and that's where again I think LinkedIn data comes into its own where we can look at exactly that direction of what's happening with hiring and that will give us an indication of what the shape of the economy will look like over the next three to five months and that's where I think sales leaders need to be looking at because that will give the overall picture of the health of that economy with regards to where they need to go with their sales business great great um we've got some interesting stats we're going to get to that are UK specific one or two that I found quite surprising and we'll get to them in a couple of questions but I'd love to go to you now Becky and talk a little bit about sales technology what is the most useful thing sales technology can do for a salesperson or sales team in the UK in 2022 um I mean there's a lot of Technology out there right um I think uh one of the uh the data points in the and the the um the recent study shows that the average sales Tech stack has 13 virtual selling Technologies so when we talk about excuse me we talk about some sales technology in my opinion it's multifaceted so first of all we have the technology that connects people and you know let's be honest we're rather good at using it now I'm talking about Solutions such as teams and zoom that allows sellers to be connected virtually as well as face-to-face and as Paul said um earlier I think it was with 70 of buyers saying that they'll continue to work remotely at least some of the time adopting and using that technology is imperative to sales people's successes um next up for me I would dig into sales Navigator and I know that you know everyone's going to think that I would say that but but sort of hear me out Walmart reaches King okay that's not to say that there is a place for cold calling there always will be but we know that sales and and good selling stems from trust uh relationship connection introductions that are made through someone else and and with context always um land the best and that's where sales Navigator and that kind of Technology can help out and I think lastly and in my opinion the most important it's insights or data we've entered a very um personalized world if you will for a salesperson having data that's relevant to the customer or the client that is imperative so researching being able to give constructive advice and thought leadership as you progress through the cell cycle through a sales campaign that's going to elevate your position with your client it's going to forge a much stronger relationship and the end of the day is going to deliver the most the most value I think you know to to summarize really the technology that affords you to best support your client is your friend that's what you have to lean into yeah I think what we're hearing is it's not just about more sales Tech it's about more of the right sales Tech and that's what we're hearing our top performing Sellers and selling teams are really doing they're picking the right sales Tech and they're they're going into it deep and embedding it in their in their work if I may add to that actually I I would I would look at it through two different lenses one is what can this what will the sales Tech do for the organization and what will it do for the individual sales professional for the organization and particularly looking at the UK um you know there there there is now the opportunity to be a global first provider of whatever service those companies are providing you don't need to be restricted to the island to the region it's not a local first and then grow it out from there and so understanding where the opportunity lies globally is a gateway through which your sales technology can bring you and again you know leveraging the LinkedIn platform leveraging the the global nature of of of the The Firm economics uh firm Graphics rather as well as the individual data will allow UK companies to understand where those pockets of opportunity outside of their home country at an individual level sales Tech the the the the top takeaway for individuals is to help them prioritize re-prioritize and re-prioritize again in in a moment um as time is uh is the only finite resource that that individual will have access to they have their territory as a sales professional but that territory is not created equally and in fact it's shifting all the time with triggers and changes and developments that happen at at an industry an account and indeed an individual buyer level and being able to track and act upon those changes as they happen is going to allow that sales professional to spend their time much more effectively so any technology that allows them to do that is a win for me and we heard of course recently Paul or or a long time ago at this point really that data is the new oil right and data is critical to a sales person today sales people having information on buyers is really the differentiator what data should sales people have and where can they get it from so I think it's it's important that we don't conflate data and information so for me anyway and I don't think this is a definition written down anywhere in the world but for me data is the what and information is the so what right so when we talk about changes in your account base and whatnot data is being able to track decision makers changing jobs changing companies information is being able to Overlay that on your pipeline on your account base on your territory and then understanding what the implications are for you so a very simple example in the very survey that we're talking about the UK's data sales survey we learned that more than half of the buyers surveyed have bought a service from their sales professionals previously I haven't explained that well but if they're if they've bought something from you before as a sales professional there's more than half of them buy from you again either in their current capacity or in a new capacity so if you can track your decision makers your happy clients as they move from company to company and then overlay that with your territory with your pipeline that helps you to prioritize really actionable information to help you accelerate your sales Cycles make wins and you know bring success to those buyers again in their new environment so that's information the data is being able to track those changes at a at a macro level at scale beautifully put for the the difference between data and information I love it thank you and I think what we're learning is there's a lot of opportunity there's a lot of good news there for sales people that are taking the lessons from the information at their disposal right now and what they can do with that yeah for sure and it's it's a whole new world we have access to data and information that we've never had before the problem is separating the signal from the noise yeah right we can be overwhelmed by that and and paralyzed therefore and so we need to be able to figure out which ones are meaningful to me right now and how do I act upon that yeah what's my next best action yeah one stat I might go to you Becky once that that caught my eye in the UK state of sales report this year and it caught my eye for two reasons one it's a three-quarters of sales people are telling us that they have had a deal either lost or delayed by a key decision maker leaving the account they're working with and that kind of I had two emotive reactions I want three quarters is a big number right that's most people but but who are the quarter that happened right because working working in sales for a long time it seems to happen to to everybody knowing this Becky and knowing what we know about you know how often you know key decision makers move roles and how that affects the sales person what what can we do with that information um okay well this is this is the multi-thread jack isn't it you know we talk about it a lot we talk about it all the time but it it has to be done if you've only have one connection and you speak to one person in your your your client the chances are you're on the back foot whether that's uh because of risk of them of leaving or whether that's just because the competition are going to be speaking to more people um it's incredibly rare for one person to hold um all of the cards on a purchasing decision um you know the the buying Circle if you will continues to um to increase so you've got to get ahead of the game you've got to look at the circle of influence um at your client you've got to get sponsors influence advisors that way if someone does move you have someone else um to go to and at the moment um if you think about in light of the the great reshuffle this is something we we need to expect is going to to happen yeah so if you multi-thread if you build out that that wider relationship um Network in your client you have the least chance of slowing or stopping a sale I think the other piece of advice would you've got to make your business case watertight that means really getting under the covers of what your clients objectives are what challenges they face and how your solution can add value to them in overcoming those challenges and meeting their objectives if you have multiple relationships and you're aligned on the client's objectives you have far more chance of staying the course and that kind of doubles back really to what Paul was just saying around data and information okay you know you've really got to be going meeting the customer where they are and digging deep understanding what they're trying to achieve and then demonstrating the value and the support that you can give to them and to help them achieve that um and and then finally you know um Paul again you just sort of alluded to that in your in your your last answer but when decision makers do leave and they will oftentimes they go somewhere else um 52 of buyers say that they've purchased from a sales rep that they were a client of at a previous company so it makes sense to stay in touch yes opportunity is everywhere if you if you put the work in and keep your eyes open right and you touched on something there Becky that I found very interesting I mentioned at the top of the show we had a start where the UK really stands alone from everybody else and a little over a decade ago in 2011 the corporate executive board brought us the Challenger sale where you know they laid down that now there were 5.4 decision makers involved in each buying decision in a B2B sale and every couple of years they've revised that you know that number up that's that up we've done a lot of work on this over the last few years and in our UK state of sales report we have discovered now and we've done a bunch of these state of sales reports all around the world and the UK stands alone above all other markets with 13 decision makers involved in the average B2B buying decision what question to Shane and Paul is you know why is it that that these buying committees or that these buying decisions are becoming so complex and so large I think Jackie comes back to what I mentioned at the top of the show which is people are looking for more value when they're making making spending on behalf of their firm or their business and that brings an added level of scrutiny as well and Paul rightly pointed to the fact that data and information exists not only does that exist from our end but it also exists from the customer and end as well they're also exposed to the same amount of data and the same amount of information and they probably have developed a capacity and expertise in interpreting what that means so by seeing an increase in the size of the buying committee the bar is being raised certainly but I think the prize then ultimately if you maintain and create that relationship and it persist persists over time as the state of sales report has told us that a 50 figure figure holds through that that scrutiny that extra scrutiny can actually bring with it extra reward for businesses that want to sell to those folks so it underlines the importance of being able to make that distinction between data and insight and to be able to show exactly that not only do you understand the context within which your client is operating but you have a product or an Avenue for them to further exploit that context for their benefits as well yeah I would say in addition to that these decisions are becoming more Federated because more people have an opinion and a stake in what the outcome of that decision is right so when I would have started out in sales the CIO or the chief technology officer or the I.T Department made the technology purchasing decisions and then they turned around and they told the business what they had bought and the business had to get on with it and you know just adopt it that is no longer the case in a world where services are highly transferable switch on switch off in a SAS environment um usage and engagement from the end user population is absolutely critical and if it doesn't come up to Snuff you know at day 364 there is no day 365 for that service so sales people now really have to get to not only the economic buyer but also to the the people who are going to be leveraging that service and voting with their feet come renewal time yeah it's a much deeper per selling process to be successful and a much greater focus on value absolutely which is a huge hugely positive development gone are the days when you know the contract was signed and the next day a truck backed up with a whole bunch of technology that got stuffed into the basement and you were on the hook for it for the next five 10 15 years because the rip and replace was just too painful now it's a very the barriers to exit for a client are much lower and that's a huge positive yeah the days of sales people just getting checks signed and heading to the pub those days are long gone unfortunately think as well I think as well Jack there's one other there's one other sort of point to make on that and we've seen this happen um before in previous years where budgets have been tightened that that process for sign off changes as well and so whilst we're talking about that buying Circle growing I think as we see the next kind of you know months or so play out it's really important that people dig back in to that sign off process because this is an opportunity for companies to restructure or tighten um that that kind of that buying cycle that that buying process and I think we're oftentimes where we see people get caught out is where they make the assumption that it's going to be the same way as it was last time so this is a good time to check and to test and to see whether any changes have occurred in the uh in in the buying cycle in that sign off process great I think I've got time for one last question for the panel and for anybody watching online please drop your questions in the comments box and we'll we'll get back to you but to the panel one last question is post pandemic how have UK buyers expectations changed and do you see it as different to other regions oh um so how they have changed I believe and forgive me to the audience if I'm zeroing in too much on the technology world I know there are people who aren't selling technology today but I am going to just think about technology for a moment B2B buyers are first and foremost they are consumers you know from 6 p.m onwards every weekday and throughout the weekend they're consumers and they've become uh attuned to a superlatively highly personalized sale and service from their consumer Brands like Netflix and Spotify and Amazon and whatever and then from nine till six on a Monday to Friday they're typically not getting that same level of customization personalization engagement from their B2B buyers and I think there's a there's a a Revolt almost against that that they are punishing those organizations that that don't make that leap that don't meet those expectations and they are rewarding those that do so I think that's a change that we're seeing develop and I think that's a global change as well but possibly led by the UK so in sales Tech we've all got to work harder because Netflix has done such a good bloody job pretty much yeah yeah fantastic thank you all very much uh we'll have to leave it there as that's all we've got time for it today though we could probably talk about this topic all day I would like to thank all my guests for taking part in our show and for sharing with us their expertise and to you our audience for joining us today we hope you've got a few useful takeaways from our discussion and we hope to see you again soon for another episode of the LinkedIn sales Think Tank remember you can still ask any last minute questions in the Q a box and we will respond to you alternatively we got loads of sales resources available to you on our website or by following the LinkedIn sales Solutions blog that's it for now thank you all and have a great day foreign [Music]