Answer: Technology Sales. For a more detailed answer, read on…
The global technology market is valued to be around $5 trillion and is projected to grow around 5% annually till 2024. It is also the industry with the most number of startups because of its constant innovation and reinvention. This directly translates into more jobs. For sales, it is the road to El Dorado. With the right combination of hard work, training and networking, there is definite success and reward. The pandmeic era has also proved that the world is not done with digitization as most of the services such as education and support being shifted to online models. There is no saturation in sight as new technologies are opening up unexplored avenues that can be filled up by experts – new and old. It is also one of the more lucrative industries as software sales remain one of the highest paying jobs in the world. Tech startups are also accelerating economies by providing salaries almost double their national averages.
What are the best practices for Sales in the Digital world?
The sales process has changed as a result of the digital age, particularly in the B2B sector where there are several players and lengthy contracts. Sales teams now must cope with numerous communication channels, various client histories, shifting company demands, and increasingly informed prospects. The prospects are well down the purchasing path before they even contact the sales rep as they do the majority of the research about the organization and industry over the interent before reaching out to the agent.
Therefore, a need for a streamlined methodology arises for every salesperson and their teams to tackle these informed prospects. These methodologies can be employed according to the type of buyer.
The world-famous Sandler Submarine outlines the seven-step system for successful selling. It’s a low-pressure, consultative selling approach that puts you, the salesperson, in control of the discovery process.
Challenger reps use their understanding of their customers’ businesses to deliver new insights and drive their thinking in new and different ways. They bring new ideas, like how to save money or avoid risk, that the customer hadn’t previously considered or fully appreciated on their own. Contrary to the Relationship Builder, Challengers are effective because they build constructive tension.
3. MEDDIC
Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion are the acronyms that characterize this strategy. MEDDIC focuses on helping the sales person to understand whether an opportunity is qualified by focusing on value selling in an outcome focused manner that supports the customer journey.
When speaking with prospects or clients about their company and solution needs, IBM developed BANT to help them spot opportunities. If a prospect satisfies three of the four BANT criteria, an opportunity is considered confirmed, according to IBM advice. Inside Sales representatives and sales managers can employ either a rigid or flexible version of BANT.
Budget: What is the lead’s budget, exactly? Authority: Do the leaders have the authority to make choices or have any influence on how policies are developed? Need: What are the business needs of the lead? Timeframe: How soon will the lead complete the solution?
5. The SNAP Method:
Jill Konrath’s SNAP selling is a sales technique for displaying a salesperson’s greatest qualities. Simple, Invaluable, Align, and Priorities is the acronym for SNAP. Essentially, you want to keep your sales as straightforward as you can. Every form of contact and every approach you use should be really helpful. Aligning with the requirements of the prospect is crucial. Prioritizing everything, including your sales activities and the details you will give with a prospect, is also crucial.
6. The SPIN method
SPIN stands for the question types; Situation, Problem, Implication, Needs-Payoff.
With the SPIN selling sales process, you ask a series of questions to help identify the wants of a prospect. The basic approach known as SPIN was created by Neil Rackham in 1988 and is still widely used today. You may more clearly emphasize a customer’s demands and any discomfort they may be experiencing by asking specific inquiries. They are then more likely to heed the counsel of a salesman and purchase a remedy. It is significant since it makes it simpler for salesmen to negotiate with clients, comprehend their issues, and complete deals.
7. The NEAT method:
Need, Economic Impact, Access to Authority, and Timeline make up the acronym NEAT.
The NEAT approach prioritizes qualification and discovery first. The next step is to gain access to and comprehend the timetable of the prospective company’s purchasing authority.
Need: Understanding a prospect’s or lead’s demands can help you determine whether your solution can meet them.
Economic Impact: The measurable effect your solution will have on their business is called the economic impact.
Access to Authority: Gaining access to a business decision-maker who can determine whether to pay for your solution is the goal of access to authority.
Timeline: The timeline is used to gauge how long the sales cycle will be.
8. The Solution method and the Value selling method:
The technique called solution selling concentrates on providing answers to the particular issues a prospect is having. One of the most common styles of selling, the technique is pretty obvious for the majority of salespeople. Solution selling has the advantage of being simple to train new representatives in. This minimizes training overhead and enables new reps to quickly train.
However, the tactic of highlighting the advantages and worth of what you are selling is known as value selling. This approach is crucial since it may help a company’s margins grow. The goal is to create services, tools, and processes with high initial value and time costs that will eventually have lower operational costs. Utilizing value selling has the advantage of allowing you to trade time for perceived value.
CONCLUSION:
Therefore, we can see that as fast as the industry is coming up with new technology, the world of sales is producing new methods of selling it. With new innovative solutions on offer every few months, it is the tech salespeople’s job to educate and sell the prospects with the best possible fit. With the prospects also being as aware and educated as they are, the salespeople have to keep abreast of the advances in their fields and update their techniques as best as they can. Thus, the whole salesforce is required to adopt a methodical way of sales to keep up with their large and diverse customer base.
This also means that the industry is growing at such a pace and magnitude that the avenues available for a sales person to excel and the amount of product or solution available to sell is humongous. Couple that with the compensation and fulfillment that can be achieved through tech sales, and it becomes an obvious choice of industry for a high achieving sales professional.
