Sales Mastery, in conjunction with Korn Ferry, recently completed their survey of 361 buyers of B2B products and services. The study looked at buyers’ preferred sources for solving business problems and preferred point of engagement with sellers during the buying process. How sellers rank in these two categories has not improved since Miller-Heiman conducted their first buyer study three years ago.
The survey also compared buyers’ perceptions to distance/remote buying necessitated by Covid. Here, buyers and sales managers were largely in agreement about how effective sellers were in this new environment, a view slightly less positive than sellers’ view of their online effectiveness.
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Buyers also saw more changes adopted during the pandemic likely to remain permanent or, at a minimum, a permanent component of B2B buying than sellers did during Korn Ferry-Sales Mastery’s 2020 Virtual Selling study (data gathered Sept-Oct 2020).
“We look for what is (remote meetings) and isn’t (seller engagement) changing,” said Jim Dickie, Research Fellow, at Sales Mastery. “We then offer our view on what actions sellers and their managers should consider based on this data.” He continued, “We outline five questions B2B selling organizations should address, including whether or not they are showing up where their buyers are now, and the make-up of their sellers to be successful now and in the next couple years.”
Sales Mastery will be releasing a series of Research Notes addressing the challenges companies face in optimizing their sales engagement and readiness challenges in today’s environment.