The new year has begun! From the Kenneth Smit editorial team, we also wish you a healthy and successful 2020. We hope to contribute to your success as a salesperson with our blogs again this year, or at least inspire you.
In our view, early January is therefore the perfect moment to share a number of trends with you that we expect to play (or will play) an important role in our field. We are kicking off the new year with 4 interesting sales trends to keep an eye on this year.
Creativity of your communication
In B2C, this trend has been ongoing for years. Due to the enormous increase in communication stimuli in the consumer's daily life, especially online, it is becoming increasingly important for organizations to stand out from the crowd. How do you do that?
By being creative and ensuring that your communication strikes the right chord. We are seeing this development becoming increasingly prominent in B2B as well.
Communication between companies was often very static. Think, for example, of printed brochures. However, over the past year, we have seen more and more companies enlisting the help of professional advertising agencies to take their communication to the next level.
Gamification and augmented reality are making their entry into the B2B sales process. Are you ready for it?
Augmented reality
We want our sales efforts to become increasingly scalable. Visiting all our customers in person is often no longer an option. A large part of the communication takes place via digital channels.
The major disadvantage of digital is (or rather, was) that it is not tangible. You cannot easily showcase your product in all its glory, which is often a crucial aspect for B2B.
The advent of augmented reality makes it possible to actually display your products via digital media.
We see that companies that produce (technical) products in particular are increasingly using augmented reality to make their products tangible for the prospect or customer.
For example, watch this short video: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?
Security & privacy
Security and privacy have long ceased to play an important role solely in consumer marketing. As a salesperson, you need to take this relatively 'new' phenomenon within our industry into account.
There is much ground to be gained, particularly in the area of ​​security. For instance, it still frequently happens that data is shared between prospect and salesperson during a sales process via email or even social media.
These are often unsecured documents containing sensitive business data, such as briefings, debriefs, customer data, etc. Always be aware of the sensitivity of your data and preferably work only with protected/secured documents.
Your customer or lead will certainly appreciate that you handle this carefully and critically. A simple NDA is no longer always sufficient.
Use of data versus gut feeling
Salespeople are proud of their gut feeling, experience, and nose for business. And rightly so; that is a large part of our differentiating factor. If we combine that with data as well, we have an unbeatable combination.
By using data, you can personalize and substantiate your sales process. Consider, for example, using LinkedIn as a data source to personalize your communication. Who are the key DMUs, what are their interests and/or hobbies, and what is their background?
That is all information that is often publicly available. In addition, data is increasingly being used within B2B to improve customer retention. For example, by digitally collecting customer feedback and feeding it back into your production.
Or by offering chat options for questions and issues. In a sense, data ensures that sales and service are becoming increasingly intertwined.
These trends are of course the only trends that will matter in 2020. Which other sales trends do you think will play an important role in 2020, and how do you respond to them with your organization or department? Share it with us!