Today’s B2B customers are very clear about what they want from suppliers: more channels, more convenience, and a more personalized experience. They want the right mix of in-person interactions, remote contact via phone or video, and e-commerce self-service across the purchasing journey. Adjusting to this new dynamic requires B2B organizations to shift from “traditional” and “inside” sales to “hybrid” in order to move with the customer.

Artificial intelligence has entered the sales arena. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

The shift to remote and now hybrid workforces dramatically affected how sales managers train and coach their reps. Already facing time constraints, managers have reduced visibility into seller activity and struggle to personalize coaching.

Although sales training and sales coaching both aim to improve a sales team’s performance, each process follows a unique approach.

Sales training equips reps with the tools they need to get started, but sales coaching is what allows for an individual’s continued growth over time. To ensure success, it’s important to understand how these two pieces work together, and when each should be used in your organization.

Ask any salesperson about the biggest challenge they face along the customer journey, and they’ll probably say “sales objections.” Every seller has lost a prospect due to a concern expressed about pricing or a product’s ability to solve a specific problem.

The constant connectivity. The steadfast march of technology. The "know everything" environment. It's all changing the way you, me, and your customers perceive a company or brand. In some cases, our perception is influenced by word of mouth — recommendations from friends, online reviews, tweets, and Facebook rants. In other cases, it's our own experiences — both online and off — that shape the way we think about a brand.

Imagine that you’re a prospect working with two salespeople from competing companies at the same time: one uses hard sell tactics and the other uses soft selling techniques.

The first sends you an obviously canned email asking for a five-minute call, followed up with a demo, the demo with a pitch — and before you know it, they're asking for the close.

A simple take on prices is that they are an obstacle toward the purchase of a desired product or service. Companies, therefore, see a legitimate need to reduce “friction” in the transaction, which they accomplish by reaching into a seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, ranging from the subtle to the egregious.

Showing gratitude isn’t just a nice thing to do – it also makes an impact.

According to a study by Harvard, “expressing gratitude helps people feel positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.”

Being great at sales is, in part, being great at asking questions.

The reason – questions help you understand your buyer’s situation and, just as important, your buyer themselves. This helps you co-create a solution with them that provides value to both parties.

Do you feel like you’ve hit a wall in your success – either in your personal life or professional development? Like there’s nowhere else to go but down or sideways? Being stuck and not knowing what to do about it is one of worst feelings in life, no matter who you are and what you do. But the good news is there’s a way to get un-stuck, and it starts with you and your leadership ability!

What CEO has time to reflection? Few. And yet, I'm constantly urging those at the top to take a breather -- to meditate, think examine. In the words of researchers at MIT: "The process of reflection helps us to develop our understanding more deeply and to make our intuitive knowledge shareable with others."

What CEO has time to reflection? Few. And yet, I'm constantly urging those at the top to take a breather -- to meditate, think examine. In the words of researchers at MIT: "The process of reflection helps us to develop our understanding more deeply and to make our intuitive knowledge shareable with others."

On the surface, it’s easy to see products as the center of your sales strategy. After all, products and services are the things you sell. It’s natural to build a strategy around them. You want to highlight their best features, compare to the competition, and price to make a profit. However, as easy as this sounds, it’s just not realistic.

Think about the last time you received service that was exceptional. And by exceptional, I mean exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. How you were communicated with is often what shapes your impression — good or bad.

Anytime you're selling, you're trying to balance the price you're asking for with the amount of value you're providing your customer. If you want to get the highest price possible, for instance, your goal is to convince your customer of the amount of value they're getting in exchange.

The fact is, better customer experiences are better for business. Great CX means your customers are happier, feel taken care of, and are more loyal—all of which leads to more profits. It takes the right tools and data to fuel those experiences, and a lot of it is already at your fingertips.

During the early stages of the pandemic, many B2B companies considered remote interactions as a temporary patch, a way to stay in touch with customers while sales reps were confined to their home offices. Now, it’s becoming clear that omnichannel is here to stay, and many businesses aren’t prepared for this permanent change.

My articles begin with analogies so we'll start by asking, has baseball changed? Games take longer, there is role specialization, starting pitchers rarely complete games, hitters are stronger, pitchers routinely throw in the mid 90's and there is a trend towards either hitting a home run or striking out. But it's still baseball. It is still played the same way. The changes are superficial.

And in the context of how it affects salespeople, has buying really changed?

Channel sales represents 75% of the world’s commerce, according to Forrester’s Jay McBain. That being the case, there is a huge need for sales enablement to ensure those sellers can perform effectively for their partner companies. If your company is among that 75%, you know channel sellers—partners, distributors, indirect sellers, or independent agents—have different needs than inside sales reps.

Any salesperson will tell you that what they do is part science and part art — part hard skills (the actual knowledge of the product and the market) and part soft skills (the interpersonal aspect of sales).

Today’s sales training paradigms take a divide-and-conquer approach to developing the hybrid of soft/hard skills that drive direct sales interactions