Buyer-led sales behaviours and their impact on revenue growth
Businesses are tackling many disruptive forces right now. Perhaps the most profound of these, when it comes to impact on sales rep success, is changing buyer behaviour.
The traditional linear sales journey simply no longer applies today. In fact, I would go a step further and say that such a legacy approach will actually cost your business sales.
Why?
Because buyers have fundamentally changed. The B2B buying journey today is multifaceted, multi-stakeholder, highly informed, risk-averse, and incredibly dynamic.
What do buyers want?
- More control
- Personalised experiences curated to meet their unique needs and preferences
- Conversations, not presentations
- Customised solutions, not generic product pushes
- Trusted relationships
- A de-risked process, with relevant, proactive advice and value at every stage
Of course, the downside is this often leads to indecision, lengthy negotiations, and deal slippage. In fact, 61% of deals are lost to buyer indecision, 44% of deals are slipping, and win rates have plummeted by a staggering 67%.
Now for the good news…
According to Gartner, 53% of why buyers buy today is not based on product, price, or brand dominance. Instead, the sales experience is king, with 86% of buyers willing to pay more for a better one. As much as 16% more, according to Pwc.
Companies delivering great buying experiences typically grow twice as fast as those that deliver average ones. So, the primary role of sales reps today must be to deliver an experience that exceeds expectations.
This requires the successful development and application of buyer-led behaviours.
Buyer-centricity is not just a buzzword
Many sales teams believe they are buyer-centric, and that they practice buyer-led sales behaviours. The statistics suggest otherwise.
According to Flume’s Sales Scorecard, only 15% of sellers consistently put themselves in the buyers shoes, and only 17% consistently use knowledge of the buyer to tailor their approach.
The vast majority of poor sales performance is driven by sales-led, rather than buyer-led behaviours, with reps and sales teams as a whole focussing on their own needs, goals, and targets rather than those of their buyers.
This is a critical and costly mistake. Sellers need to be constantly educating themselves on what good looks like to the buyer and adapt their behaviours accordingly. With the right buyer-led sales behaviours reps can:
- Personalise their approach and tailor every interaction
- Continuously educate themselves and the buyer
- De-risk the sales process, with constant qualification of approach and reaffirmation of value
Consistently leveraging buyer-led sales behaviours will increase the predictability of revenue growth by enhancing the sales experience.
Why aren’t sales reps truly buyer-led?
The problem is buyer behaviours are changing faster than traditional sales training can cater for. Most sales training hasn’t caught up with the needs of today’s buyers, and therefore the needs of today’s sellers.
High-performing businesses are quickly recognising the need for a change in approach – one that prioritises behaviour change and invests in developing, embedding and continuously enhancing the right buyer-led sales behaviours.
A modern approach to sales training is built on a deep understanding of how buyers buy, and therefore the behaviours sellers need at every stage of the buyer lifecycle. Not only that, but it must also equip teams to be responsive to constantly-evolving expectations, with the ability and confidence to think on their feet.
It works. High-growth organisations shaking up the sales training playbook are seeing bottom line-boosting return on investment. Businesses prioritising the customer experience as part of a buyer-led strategy achieve revenue growth rates 1.8 times higher than those that don’t. And according to Hubspot data, a seamless buyer-led experience can drive a 27% increase in customer retention rates.
Are you ready for a new approach?
Flume has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the challenges, trends, and opportunities defining predictable revenue growth. Most importantly, diving deep into the buyer-led sales behaviours teams must cultivate.
Download your free copy of ‘Driving Predictable Revenue Growth: A Roadmap for Sales Leaders‘ and learn:
- How high-growth organisations are outperforming the competition with buyer-led sales behaviours
- A three-step framework for improving performance:
- Identify high-performing buyer-led behaviours
- Bottle the brilliance and codify best practice
- Nurture talent by optimising the impact of training
- What good sales training should look like today
Then get in touch with our behaviour change experts to find out how Flume can redefine sales training for your organisation, and help you build a new breed of buyer-led and outcome-driven sales reps that will super-charge revenue growth.
