Sell smarter How data insights can help your team meet sales targets Interview with Byron Matthew

the science of selling has become more important than the art that's the thesis of my next guest Byron Matthew Sam Miller Heiman group Miller Heiman takes global research into sales techniques and performance and develops the best practices to make sales teams more effective and efficient Byron you've identified four key trends

that are making selling harder for businesses yeah number one digital

disruption we understand that we all feel that but in the world of selling the amount of technology and tools and data that buyers have is really causing a lot of problems and issues for sellers number two urbanization specifically in emerging economies there are 65 million more people every single year living in cities and that might seem great you know a bunch of people in the same place let's sell but the problem is that brings in new competition tons of price pressures and a lot of difficulties in trying to figure out how to break through some of these markets number three the productivity in the ageing workforce GDP by math is productivity plus labor growth so if you have lower labor growth that's puts more pressure on productivity which settling organizations and then finally we think about this idea of you just kind of compete in your sector that's all gonna get blurred primarily through technology platforms will be integrate industries together into sort of an interconnected ecosystem which will provide a ton of challenges for sellers it's not as simple anymore what evidence is there of the impact of these trends so we do a lot of research around the world of sales and performance and by the numbers across the board they're down let me give you a good example the percent of reps that make quota 2017 we study this all industries all regions and it's at a five year low 53% of reps make quoted now you might say that's horrible well you want about 2/3 of your reps to make quota but 53% that gap is huge how can sales organizations adapt to overcome these challenges yeah we actually think there's a few things that all selling organizations need to be investing in number one selling models

have changed so historically you know started with product selling then it moved to solution so and that means you show up you ask really good questions you understand their needs and then you provide them a solution that's been the predominant model for decades it's actually not good enough anymore buyers are well informed and go back to that digital disruption they've got tons of information now you have to change the game you have to add value in the sales process you got to provide insight data that shift in selling model very difficult to do but the ones that are doing it are succeeding number two sales enablement

as a function organizations are starting

up sales enablement to create value engineers to power change in the organization number three talent really forward-thinking selling organizations are thinking about their talent what does that next generation talent look like big difference between EQ and IQ with more Science in selling the IQ part of a professionals traits becoming more important and finally and probably the most important is process maturity it used to be the differentiator if you had a methodology your way of selling had everyone operating together now that's a circuit breaker you have to have that and then from there you could invest in capabilities Miller Heiman group is also having to deal with these challenges how are you adapting our legacy was all based on training and methodology and skill programs that's only part of the equation now so we've had to invest in capabilities around services and consulting capabilities around talent management and really helping organizations think about their people capabilities around technology CRM tool selling organizations are embracing data rich insight rich environments imagine if you captured all of the data every time they went out to win more deals and then that data was smart enough to provide insights to that individual said hey the last two times you won these were the things that you did and then it would tell your supervisor your frontline sales leader hey in your forecast when you're working with byron think about this he wins more when he develops a coach that type of competitive advantage is necessary going forward and that's exactly what we're delivering so in this environment and

with these new tools what is the talent profile of a successful salesperson today we're absolutely seeing a shift we actually bought a company from IBM called Talent Analytics and it had it came with all this massive amounts of assessment data and what we're seeing is a shift from if you just at the highest level think about EQ and IQ which are both important in a seller but the predominant trait was more on kind of the EQ the persuasive traits we see that shifting more into analytical traits in the IQ part doesn't mean the EQ is not important and think about that comment I made earlier around digital disruption and data everywhere and the science of selling to become a value engineer just to show up not just ask good questions but to provide insights and data analytics those type of traits are gonna be really important in the future biron thank you very much Thanks for watching you can read the research that informed this video at CSO insights comm and learn even more at Miller Heiman group calm and please subscribe for the latest business finance and strategic insights that are transforming Europe from European CEO calm