The New Normal: Selling In The COVID Economy


It has been several years since I launched The Digital Advantage at the dawn of the digital buying era. Now, with tectonic changes again occurring in business, particularly around the sales profession, I am debuting my second blog, The New Normal: Selling In The COVID Economy.

The game of Sales, the profession of Selling, was in the process of being disrupted before the virus hit. Digital buying processes were forcing sales teams to alter their approach. The power shifted to the buyers, as they were able to access more information than ever before, and thus not needing to rely on the friendly neighborhood sales rep to get the answers they needed to make a purchase decision. Sales reps needed to learn new skills, and not all selling organizations understood this. From the period of 2010-2019, the percentage of reps that achieved quota dropped by over 10 percentage points. Companies voiced frustration in hiring effective sellers. Buyers asked for value focused conversations and instead received generic pitches. They asked for strategic advisors, subject matter experts and thought leaders and they got product pitchers and hard selling tactics. Leadership decided that they would go cheap, hiring inexperienced reps as the first impression they wanted to give their prospects. In addition, they threw them out there with little to no training. The result: inboxes were filled with non sensical product pitches from BDR's throwing darts while blindfolded. And when a prospect agreed to a meeting, they only invited the rep back 17% of the time(Forrester). The good news, though, was that economic conditions were amazing. Money was flowing. Deals were getting done. Reps were a work in progress, but cash was coming in. 

But that era ended on March 13th when a national emergency was declared ahead of a country wide shutdown. We are now slugging through the COVID Economy, with dramatically reduced budgets, and thus a sharply lower threshold for inadequate sales reps. The bar for selling has been raised...again. And the process of disruption that started in the Information Age has shifted into high gear in this new normal. Only modern sellers are going to survive this time around though. Many of you have not experienced a crisis, a major recession, or a cosmic shift in the way business is handled. Having been around a while, I have been through all of the above. I parachuted out of a dying industry 20 years ago and haven't looked back. 

The news is not all bad. With times like these comes massive opportunity. We all have the chance to excel and thrive in this new normal and that it what this new blog will be about: strategies, tactics, maneuvers, lessons, ideas, thoughts, musings on how we grab the pole and leap over the competition to achieve elite selling status. With every disruption, comes new winners from out of nowhere. I want us to stay close to the changes, to be able to lead change rather than just reacting: to be the Amazons of selling, not the Macy's; the iPhones, not the Blackberry's; the Netflix's, not the Blockbusters.'

I am glad to have you with me on this new journey. 

If you want to stay up to date with this blog and other content we produce, sign up Here and you'll get access to our latest video The Top 7 Reasons Why Prospects Go Dark

To your success,
Dan

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