“These are some of the elements that understanding hybrid sales and the mixture of the different sales approaches that it brings can offer salespeople a huge opportunity both for success with their customers, but success for themselves, their own career.” – Fred Copestake in today’s Tip 1098
Why now?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Fred Copestake. Over the last 22 years, Fred has traveled around the world 14 times visiting 36 countries and worked with over 10,000 salespeople. He has taken some of the things that really make a difference in modern selling and put these in his brand new book: Hybrid Selling. Here he is:
Fred Copestake: Hybrid selling. Why now? Well, sales professionals are facing more challenges than ever before. When I wrote my first book, Selling Through Partnering Skills, this was to help address some of the challenges that I was classified as busy, busy, busy, oldie worldly, and muddled mindset. So these are the things where salespeople are running around doing all sorts of stuff, but being quite ineffective. They’re using old-fashioned techniques that aren’t really making any difference and maybe even doing them some damage. And also they’re being quite confused in their approach as flipping between a more transactional and a more consultative or solution way of working.
However, things have happened which have changed the world we live in and so the world has changed, the world of sales. And so these are some of the things that hybrid selling and understanding how to do this can address. The way in which I’d classify these new challenges are customer challenges, climate challenges, and the challenges that come from changing change, if you like.
So when we think about these customer challenges include the fact that customers are now more advanced, they’re further down the buying cycle, they have more information, they’re in a stronger position having self-diagnosed, and know what they want from salespeople. Because of this, they become more biased towards what it is they’re looking for. They become more demanding, they’ve got higher levels of expectations, they know what it is that they’re trying to do. But paradoxically, they’re also more confused. We’re living in a VUCA world. VUCA is volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. And as a result, they’re not really sure what the best thing to do is. There is opportunity for salespeople to be able to work with them, to help them navigate the path.
Now, another set of challenges we see is from what I’m calling the climate of selling. And by this, I’m talking about the types of sales which we now need to think about what we can use to approach the best way to work. So are we SaaS? Are we traditional? Are we using SDRs and AEs? Are we being a full cycle? Are we classic consultative value, enterprise, strategic? So many different ways in which we can think about how we’re going to approach what we do.
The techniques available to salespeople, whether we’re talking about being quite customer-centric, are we using brute force? Are we being tricky dicky? Are we professional? Are they working with the customer? Are we prepared and professional? Are we a more passionate persistent type? So many different approaches, so many different ways in which we can work. We need to find a way which works best for ourselves and our customers and the technology that’s available to support. Video more important than ever, as is using tools or using tools such as artificial intelligence to be able to do the heavy lifting for us.
Now, let’s add into the fact that change is going on at pace. How can we understand that? How do we know where we fit in? What’s our response to change? Are we initiated? Do we like change? Do we see the opportunity? Are we resistors? Do we push back against it or do we just move along with it? And what are our customers like? How can we help them? What’s their stance on change? Can we use that again as an opportunity to work with them more effectively?
The speed in which we react offers a potential entity add value with the people we’re working with. These are some of the elements that understanding hybrid sales and the mixture of the different sales approaches that it brings can offer salespeople a huge opportunity both for success with their customers, but success for themselves, their own career. It’s about becoming more relevant and about future-proofing what they’re doing. Now I’m moving on.
Scott Ingram: Hopefully you’re listening to these tips the day they come out, because today is the last day you can pick up a copy of Fred’s new Hybrid Selling book on Amazon for just 99 cents. We’ll have links for you as always at DailySales.Tips/1098.
Once you’ve grabbed your copy, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!