The Seller Role of the Future with Alice Walmesley
Oct 25, 2023
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Alice Walmesley, Gartner expert, discusses reimagining the seller role for the future. They explore challenges faced by sellers, replicating successful practices, and technology as a teammate in sales. They also discuss incorporating technology into the seller role and express gratitude at the end.
Creating a seller role that meets buyers' needs is crucial in a challenging environment with dysfunctional decision-making.
Technology should be seen as a teammate for sellers, actively contributing to decision-making and execution.
Deep dives
Reshaping the Seller Role
The research highlights the opportunity to re-scope the seller role by creating a role that meets buyers' needs and that sellers want to do. This is crucial in a challenging environment where buyers struggle to make good decisions due to dysfunction and lack of consensus. While technology can alleviate some burdens, it is not the whole solution, and being human in sales remains vital for as long as there are human buyers.
From Technology as a Tool to Technology as a Teammate
There is a shift in focus from seeing technology as a tool to viewing it as a teammate for sellers. By adopting stages three and four of technology integration (automated selling and autonomous selling), technology can actively contribute to decision-making and execution, freeing sellers from excessive burdens. However, organizations must avoid running everything through sellers, creating a bottleneck, and ensure technology becomes a fully integrated part of the sales team.
Delivering Value Affirmation through Human Interactions
The human element in sales is irreplaceable, as sellers play a critical role in providing buyers with value affirmation. Buyers who interact with sales reps are 2.3 times more likely to experience value affirmation. Skills such as active listening, perspective taking, and empathizing enable sellers to deliver value affirmation, making buyers feel understood, in control, and confident in their purchase decisions.
What does the future hold for the B2B seller? In this episode of the Gartner Sales Podcast, Betsy and Billy talk to Gartner expert Alice Walmesley, discussing how CSOs can reimagine the seller role for the future.
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