The Modern Sales Team: A New Breed, A New Speed

Flashback to the old days of sales and marketing: Willy Loman is crumbling under the existential weight of abandonment, betrayal and a shredded American Dream. Times have changed a great deal since the Willys of the world toted their briefcases and sales brochures from door to door. From briefcases to tablets, brochures to multimedia sales experiences, your sales reps’ tools have evolved with virtual abandon – which has led to some striking changes in behavior.

Times have changed, and so has sales.

Information is at the heart of our age, with mobility as its life-pumping veins. To survive, your sales reps have evolved. They are now living, breathing portals of knowledge: educating your prospects and spreading your message, never with two feet flat on the ground. Unresponsive? They fail. Slow to move, and they’re doomed.

Sales: The new normal.

• THEY LACK TIME TO PREPARE
  40% of reps start preparing for sales presentations within a single day of the meeting, 12% wait until that day and only 16% start at least a week in advance.
• THEY SHOW ON THE GO
  64% of sales reps prepare for presentations in their cars, 58% on the plane, 44% in the prospect’s parking lot, 42% on vacation, 27% in the bathroom and 24% while working out. 
• THE TABLET’S THEIR TOTEM
  61% of reps said they’d rather show up to a meeting without matching socks than without tablets.

It’s painfully clear just how dependent sales reps are on their devices. And who can blame them? These electronics aren’t just shiny toys and trendy gadgets – they’re performance tools and technologies that grant your sales team easy access to sales materials and ironclad insight into prospects, leads and customers.

In addition, your reps need this unguarded gateway to powerful information. They need it desperately.

• 33% of sales reps report that they frequently can’t find the materials they need.
• 41% say their information is out of date and unappealing.
• 51% of reps spend valuable buyer-facing time tinkering with marketing content to make it applicable.

Technology has opened the door to flexibility, mobility and adaptability.

Stay tuned to learn how a clear and cogent content management strategy gives your reps a critical key to sales enablement: the vehicle for value transmission.

Your reps may have lots of tools, but do they have the sound technological infrastructure to underpin the entire sales process? Fill out the form below to see how a Sales Enablement Platform puts sales and marketing in deliberate, cohesive motion for sustainable success.