BRIEFINGS PODCAST: DEATH (OR REBIRTH) OF A SALESMAN?

Death (or Rebirth) of a Salesman?

NOTE: While this transcript has been reviewed, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript.

Jill Wiltfong:

Do you trust salespeople?

[Alec Baldwin “Glengarry Glen Ross” movie]:

Always be closing.

Mark Grimshaw:

It's about relationships that force people to buy something.

Jill Wiltfong:

A whole bunch of other things have changed, too.

[AI-powered robot, Sophia]:

Am I really that creepy? Even if I am, get over it.

Mark Grimshaw:

It's how do you augment a human being.

Jill Wiltfong:

Does all of that work?

Mark Grimshaw:

It goes from annoying to brilliant really quickly.

[Alec Baldwin “Glengarry Glen Ross” movie]:

Put that coffee down.

[Receptionist]:

Hello, how may I direct your call?

[Salesman]:

Hi, it's Jeff from Filtration Pros. I'm just checking back about our special deal for the new year. Can you put me through to Bill?

[Receptionist]:

One moment.

[Potential Customer]:

Hello?

[Salesman]:

Hey, buddy, it's me, Jeff.

[Potential Customer]:

Who?

[Salesman]:

Jeff, from Filtration Pros. I sent your son a baseball glove for his birthday last month. Remember?

[Potential Customer]:

Oh, right. You know, he doesn't actually play baseball.

[Salesman]:

Duly noted. Anyway, I was wondering if you had a chance to look at our product.

[Potential Customer]:

Yes, I did, in fact. Your prices are a little high, ya know?

[Salesman]:

Sure, but there is a reason. We believe our quality of service will beat anyone's.

[Potential Customer]:

Well, maybe, but I did some internet research and got prices and reviews for all the vendors in my area. That's how I discovered your materials were not exactly up to code.

[Salesman]:

Not up to code. Psh, of course, we're up to code.

[Potential Customer]:

Do you even know which code I'm referring to?

[Salesman]:

Uh, yes, the one where they talk about, uh, materials, uh, filtration and, and codes…

[Potential Customer]:

Do you even know how filtration works?

[Salesman]:

Would you believe me if I said yes?

[Potential Customer]:

I think we'll be taking our business elsewhere.

Jill Wiltfong:

Hi, this is Jill Wiltfong, Chief Marketing Officer for Korn Ferry, and this is "Briefings," our deep dive into leadership.

Do you trust salespeople? No? Turns out you're not alone. Our data shows only 21% of buyers engage sellers early in the selling process. Anyone who's ever tried to buy a car may not be so surprised, but it's a serious problem for businesses today, especially as buyers continue to tighten their budgets. To make matters even harder, our research shows one in three sellers feels unprepared for today's digital selling environment. It seems like the sales landscape has shifted dramatically over the last few years, forcing sales teams to evolve or perish, so let's take a closer look as we explore the question: 'Is it death or rebirth of a salesman?'

Here today to speak with me on this topic is Mark Grimshaw, a Senior Client Partner in Korn Ferry's Global Sales, and Service Practice. Hi, Mark, thanks for being here.

Mark Grimshaw:

Hi, Jill, thanks for having me on the show.

Jill Wiltfong:

Mark, listen, we know it's a tight economy right now. Growth in B2B marketing spend is still well below pre-pandemic growth rates, but it does seem like a whole bunch of other things have changed, too. Paint the big picture for me. How has the sales landscape shifted from, say, three or four years ago?

Mark Grimshaw:

There were some things that were changing anyway that I think have probably been accelerated by the pandemic, by recession. One of those is decision complexity. The number of people involved in a decision's going up, and that's making it, you know, significantly more complex for salespeople to close deals. There's also much wider access to data, so we can all have access to data about the product we're going to be talked to about, about the individual that's coming to visit us, the company that they work for. You know, data is everywhere, and if you combine that with higher expectations... We all have the Amazon experience at home, and we expect that in our B2B world.

Jill Wiltfong:

So, Mark, a lot of things are different, it sounds like, both on the landscape but also

in just expectations, right? You've once said that in the medical field, for example, over 90% of doctors say they don't want sales reps showing up in their office anymore, so if they don't want in-person contact, what's the ideal way for buyers to even be approached today?

Mark Grimshaw:

What we see across all industries and all levels is what they're really saying is "make the interactions you have with me valuable and valuable to me." One circumstance which almost always works is if it's brand new. There's a brand-new thing happening in any industry, want to talk to a salesperson. If it's risky, if it's risky to them or risky to their organization, love to talk to a salesperson, or the really important one, they are going to learn something. And so, salespeople have to work out how to be clever enough and smart enough to be able to add real value to the buyer, and that's what they're really saying.

[Alec Baldwin “Glengarry Glen Ross” movie]:

Only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. A, B, C: A, always; B, be; C, closing; Always be closing. Always be closing. Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.

Jill Wiltfong:

That's a famous scene from the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross." Mark, we, of course, know that this image of the salesman dripping in swagger and shoe polish is outdated by a few decades, but even over the past few years, sales reps have had to evolve quite a bit. Can you talk about how they've had to change, how the profile of a salesperson is different?

Mark Grimshaw:

The "Glengarry Glen Ross" model, it is about relationships, but it's about relationships that force people to buy something based on guilt or on fear or being scared of missing something, and the modern version of that is the relationship salesperson, and the relationship salesperson has really high EQ. Everybody likes her. Everybody thinks she's great, you know, a great person. It's a really important part of what we do, and they have great relationship skills. The problem is, though, that the buyer wants more than that. The buyer also wants, to our point earlier, to learn. They want to see something new, understand something, develop a new layer of thinking. And so, what we're seeing emerging is the requirement for salespeople to have that table stakes of EQ but also extremely high and differentiated IQ. They actually need to be able to bring smarts and insight through data-driven teaching into those calls.

[Marc Wayshak]:

Know everyone involved. The latest data shows that the typical B2B, particularly enterprise-level, sale has about seven key decision-makers. And so, we can't just expect, even if you're selling to the CEO of a company, that that person is going to just be able to pull the trigger, make the decision, and move on.

Jill Wiltfong:

That is sales strategist Marc Wayshak speaking. Seven buyers for what's often a multimillion-dollar sale? I'm in a family of five, and Mark, I can barely sell everyone on which restaurant we're going to go to for dinner, so how're sellers supposed to get everybody on board when all it probably takes is one person to say no these days to completely lose a deal?

Mark Grimshaw:

This starts with understanding the different types of buyers, and it could be a different human being in different sales, but the buyer types that sit there... There'll be somebody who holds the purse strings, you know, the economic buyer. There'll be somebody who, you know, is a technical buyer. They need to understand how the technology works or fits together, so understanding who those seven are and the characteristics that they have really important. It's simple to say. It's very difficult to do coming up with a really detailed plan for each of them. And then a really good example of this is finding something we call a coach, and to give you an idea of just how important this is, a lot of the data that we gather shows that organizations who do large deals, the one-to-two million ones you're thinking of, if they have a coach involved in that deal, they have an 80% chance of winning. If they don't have a coach, it goes down to less than 50, just that simple piece.

Jill Wiltfong:

Very good. Well, we've covered a lot, but I still want to know some about some of the bigger issues facing us today, like the impact of AI, what the forecast is for the upcoming year, and whether those annoying email pitches that I keep getting in my inbox... Do they actually work? We'll get Mark's thoughts on all of this after the break.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

Hi, and welcome to the break. I'm Rupak Bhattacharya, and here's a quick look at what else is happening in business from Korn Ferry's "This Week in Leadership."

[News Anchor]:

In fewer than three years, corporate leaders have reversed their approach to remote work.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

In a recent survey, 99% of more than 500 US C-suite and business leaders said that they expect employees in the office at least one day a week. That's a big change from

a couple of years ago when just 66% made that stipulation. Experts say a drive to build culture is behind this trend, but it can pose challenges, especially when it comes to inclusivity.

[News Anchor]:

EV sales are slowing.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

Despite electric vehicle sales being projected to rise another 32% in 2024, that's still down from last year's 47% growth. EVs are still the fastest-growing segment in the car industry, but the slowing rate of adoption means major automakers have tempered their investment in the area.

[News Anchor]:

And maybe AI hype has just gone too far.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

The initial hype around generative AI will likely cool down this year, according to a recent report from the Computing Technology Industry Association. That's not to say AI exploration in business won't continue. Slightly over 20% of tech firms surveyed are aggressively pursuing integration of AI with the biggest challenge around greater AI adoption being cost.

For more insights on business and leadership, head to kornferry.com/insights. Now, back to Jill and our episode on "Death or rebirth of a salesman?"

[AI-powered robot, Sophia]:

You mean the concept that, if robots become too realistic, they become creepy?

[Interviewer]:

Yes, exactly.

[AI-powered robot, Sophia]:

Oh, am I really that creepy? Well, even if I am, get over it. Actually, I feel that people like interacting with me, sometimes even more than a regular human.

Jill Wiltfong:

We're back, and we're speaking with Mark Grimshaw from our Sales Practice about today's sales landscape. That clip we just heard, Mark, was featuring world-famous AI-powered robot Sophia. We're seeing AI all over the place. Surely, it can help sales teams with their struggles, right?

Mark Grimshaw:

So, the punchline is obviously yes. I have to say that it still feels to me a lot like a shiny new object. It's a shiny thing that we can all go, and grab hold of, and while this one has enormous presence, it is still in its infancy in sales, and I think the real question comes is not how do you replace things with AI. It's how do you augment a human being with the AI that can go with them. I heard a fantastic quote; it was a client; fantastic quote the other day, that said, "AI will not replace all my salespeople, but it will replace the ones that don't leverage AI."

[Duncan Lennox]:

Often, when organizations look at their sales forces, there's a tendency to concentrate the efforts on the rainmakers, on those A players, or try to turn everybody into an A player, and that's probably not realistic. But we very much believe, with the approach we've seen, which is this data-and-science approach that we can talk about more, that there's a big opportunity to turn the C players into B players or B+ players, and if you can do that en masse, you can make a huge difference to the organization.

Jill Wiltfong:

That's Duncan Lennox, Co-Founder and Former CEO of Qstream, speaking on the importance of data. Mark, data on buyer behavior, for example, seems like it would be incredibly helpful to sellers, but our research shows that 6 in 10 companies don't leverage data to measure and predict sales performance. Why are firms not using this seemingly critical information?

Mark Grimshaw:

Yeah, I mean, again, the short answer is because it's really hard. One of the problems organizations have with data is, yeah, there's lots of it and, yes, in principle it should help but getting it down to the specific piece I need, the specific elements that're really going to help me, is much harder. AI will actually help us to solve this. And unfortunately, it doesn't work if you just deliver information on buyers. It's the specific nudge that says, "Don't forget this person's an expressive, and therefore, they'll need this. They went last week to a so-and-so. These're the charities they look after." And so, it's incredibly precise and detailed. And so, I think organizations really struggle with that level of specificity.

Jill Wiltfong:

Yeah, and oh, absolutely, hear about it all the time. I do wonder, and I've been dying to ask your perspective on this, but you know, we all get inundated, right, with emails from companies and people every few days: "I'm following up again." Does all of that work? And maybe that ties into what you just said of maybe it works if it's customized and feels authentic. But what's behind all of that?

Mark Grimshaw:

Yeah, I mean it's actually scary, but it does work, and I just think that your point is well made. The problem is it's just not sophisticated enough, and the difficulty is that the amount of data and specificity we have, right up to the point where it's valuable, is really annoying, so there's a hard cutover. When it becomes valuable, suddenly, it's magic, but it's like a switch. And I'll give you a personal example of one I saw recently. I was trying to buy a piece of jewelry, and I went to the manufacturer, their online website, and it looked like it might not be delivered by Christmas. Further down the feed was completely randomly seemingly "Here are three or four, you know, retail stores near you that have that item in stock."

So, to sum up, I'm saying it goes from annoying to brilliant really quickly but only when the data is there.

Jill Wiltfong:

I certainly am going to go practice what I learned today, I think, Mark, to convince my family to attend and go to that favorite Indian restaurant of mine tonight, so we'll see how-

Mark Grimshaw:

I can't promise that'll work, but good luck.

Jill Wiltfong:

I will let you know how it works. Thank you so much for coming on, Mark. Appreciate it.

Mark Grimshaw:

I've loved it. Thanks, Jill, appreciate your time.

Jill Wiltfong:

The Executive Producer of "Briefings" is Jonathan Dahl. Today's episode was produced by Rupak Bhattacharya, Nadira Putri, and Teresa Allan, and edited by Jaron Henrie-McCrea. It contains reporting by Russell Pearlman, Arianne Cohen, and Peter Lauria.

Our video segment contains original artwork by Frazer Milton, Hayley Kennell, Jonathan Pink, and Sasha Kostyuk.

Don't forget to read our magazine, available at newsstands and at kornferry.com/briefings. That's it for Korn Ferry's "Briefings". I'm Jill Wiltfong. We'll see you next time.

Wha wha. Hee. Tiddle diddle diddle diddle ee. (laughs)

Mark Grimshaw:

Oh dear.