Earlier this week, a former colleague and I were discussing the challenges of “virtual B2B selling” and he quickly declared the real issue was “virtual B2B buying” – with which I absolutely agree. The pandemic has only accelerated buying issues on the customer side. Let me explain why. This conversation reminded me of an experience from the beginning of this year. Prior to COVID-19 (and my current position), I ran a series of workshops for the sales managers at several clients during their annual sales kickoff.
The objective was for the sales managers to develop their version of the right questions to ask account teams when coaching and inspecting opportunities. Senior executives were concerned with inconsistent (and insufficient) adoption of the questions they were given in previous sales training. In short, these executives wanted the sales managers to develop and then own the questions, which would increase the likelihood they would consistently ask them.