SalesTechStar Interview with Matt Prostko, Head of Sales at TaskHuman

Matt Prostko, Head of Sales at TaskHuman chats about the evolution of B2B sales and what salespeople today have to do, to initiate a better understanding of the core customer need:

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Welcome to this SalesTechStar chat Matt, tell us about yourself and more about your role at TaskHuman 

I lead global sales for TaskHuman. I joined in 2020 as the first salesperson and have ramped us up to ~100 customers, supporting ~200K lives. Prior to TaskHuman, I led a consulting team focused on strategy execution and leadership development. In my career, I have also led sales teams in software, semiconductor, and healthcare equipment. My passion is to build real sales teams — teams that collaborate, support each other and build lasting relationships with customers and with each other.

What about modern day sales inspires you today? When it comes to B2B sales, what are some of the core practices that you feel more sales leaders need to focus on?

The best salespeople are problem solvers. Businesses today are increasing in complexity at a rate that makes it nearly impossible for employees to keep up. As such, great salespeople – ones who understand the space and invest the time to understand the obstacles that are challenging their customers – can help their clients keep pace with change and innovate within their own workflow to deliver on their goals.

To deliver on that aspiration, salespeople should double down on learning their clients’ space to ensure they can bring solutions to the problems that really need solving – not more solutions in search of a problem (which is far more common).

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How can sales leaders work harder to keep the momentum up during a downturn or hard market conditions?

Client problems don’t go away in a downturn, people just slow down investing in solutions. In these types of environments, the primary competition is often “standing pat” or “waiting around”. Salespeople that are successful in a downturn acknowledge the gravity of indecision and actively help their buyers drive productive internal discussions and navigate internal stakeholder networks to enable buying decisions.

In what ways do you feel the future of B2B sales is set to shape up to look like?

The cost of developing new technologies continues to decline, which enables the proliferation of solutions for an industry/space. As such, attractive markets will go through more rapid cycles of expansion and contraction of market competitors.  While that provides exciting choices for customers, it also adds complexity to the buying process. As such, buyers will gravitate to salespeople that can make sense of the landscape for them and act as trusted advisors.

A few thoughts on the future of sales automation/sales tech before we wrap up?

While I am convinced about the increased importance of the role of the salesperson in purchase transactions, there is no question that there is a consumerization of the buying process that is accelerating. Consumers expect solutions to be simple to research and understand, fast to execute, and easy to deploy. Sales tech that enables salespeople to provide consumer-grade simplicity to evaluations, proposals, and purchases will continue to grow in importance.

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