Sales is all about crushing quota, right? It’s a compensation driven career in which people often switch jobs for more money or a greater chance of success. Most sales executives I’ve spoken to cite earning potential and the drive to be financially successful as top motivators for their sales organizations.
But when it comes millennial and Gen Z sellers, data suggests they care about more than monetary rewards. They want to work for an organization that not only supports them, but actively tries to make their jobs more straightforward, satisfying and enjoyable. In other words, they care about their experience.
Buyers from these digital-native generations share similar expectations. They want exceptional experiences and smooth, streamlined processes.
What do companies need to attract and retain these buyers and sellers? Let’s take a look.
We’re all digitally enabled in our daily lives and an increasingly large segment of the workforce has grown up in a digital-first world, where information is freely available and easy to find.
As consumers, we’ve become accustomed to tools and technology making our lives easier and more productive. As employees, most of us have grown to expect our work experience to be like the rest of our lives. Sellers are no exception.
Sellers don’t want to spend days ploughing through mindless tasks that could (and should) be automated. They don’t want to use spreadsheets for tracking and data analysis, or jump through hoops just to create a quote for a customer.
For decades, this is how sales was done because CRM was just a system of record. Sellers had no choice but to submit quotes for approval to deal desks and wait for the results. Spreadsheets were the only way to store and retrieve data. Content, originally on paper in filing cabinets, was buried inside the digital equivalent: complex 50-file deep structures that actively discouraged anyone to look for it.
Yet some of these antiquated systems remain in place. In a Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report sponsored by SAP, Frank Cesperedes, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, says “despite technology advances, most sales models are the ad-hoc accumulation of years of reactive decisions made by multiple managers pursuing different goals.”
Clear communication comes naturally to traditional, in-person sales engagements, but faces significant challenges over digital channels. Collaboration tools can help solve those pain points.
Back then, it was harder to change jobs. Today, we have entire social platforms dedicated to professional endeavors, and to helping people get new jobs. It’s easy for recruiters to find and contact people, and it’s easy for employees to find new jobs.
This culture of opportunity means there’s much less importance attached to the idea of staying with an organization for more than a few years, let alone a entire career.Employee experience has become crucial to retention, especially in sales with its performance pressure and a higher-than-average churn rate. You’re never going to stop people leaving for more money, but you can stop them leaving for a better work experience.
A positive seller experience generally results in performance improvements and greater quota attainment. The nature of sales is that you get compensated for what you achieve, but you can’t achieve much if you’re always dealing with time-consuming, repetitive tasks.
Replace these tasks with automation and the seller is free to spend more time selling and building relationships. That could be anything from automated quote approval to recommended next-best action.
Bottom-line: the easier it’s for a seller to do their job and succeed, the better it’s for everyone.
By giving them access to the support they need, and to technology that speeds up processes, sellers gain a level of autonomy within their job. In their lives outside of work, technology has given them new levels of control over everything from central heating to delivery slots. They expect the same autonomy over their working lives.
Learn about employee experience management and why it matters. Improving employee experience unlocks big business benefits.
The same applies to buyers because just like sellers, they’re increasingly digital natives. And it’s changing how sales works.
These buyers don’t want to be treated as part of an assembly line, where they’re processed through your organization’s sales cycle in a linear fashion, and where the organization is in control (or likes to think it is.)
Buyers are increasingly in control of the sales process. They’ve done their research. They may well know what they want, what they want to spend, and when they want it. And if they don’t, they expect the organization to help them figure it out.
Their expectations are of a sales process that’s as straightforward as possible, with clever use of technology to make their experience easier, faster and, crucially, not irritating.
A prime example is when you buy something, it breaks, and you can’t get it fixed or customer service falls short. Just at the point where you’re considering never using this company again, it attempts to sell you something else, because customer service doesn’t talk to sales and marketing so they’re unaware of the problem.
Sales and marketing should have seen your interaction with customer service and stepped in to sort out the problem. As customers and buyers, we accept that organizations know huge amounts about us, but we expect them to use the knowledge to help us.
Yet plenty of organizations don’t use customer data to customize the buyer’s journey. In the HBR Analytic Services survey, 32% of respondents said they’re not doing so, or only to a slight extent.
Top brands are using customer data to understand the customer journey and deliver positive experiences that boost loyalty and revenue.
In the past, organizations could get away with running sales the old way. For some, it was a badge of honor, even a selling point: “We do things the old fashioned way. The proper way.” Staff labored over time-consuming processes for buyers and sellers.
But as seasoned sellers retire, the younger digital-first staff replacing them will not put up with such inefficiencies. The experience they want is not the exception anymore. It’s expected. When an organization can’t provide it, sellers will move to one that does.
The same holds true for the modern digital-native buyers. If a company fails to provide them with the personalized, seamless experience they expect, they’ll quickly switch to the competition.
