Sellers today have an unenviable job: buyers are increasingly conservative, and deals are taking longer to close. A survey from SBI in Q3 2023 shows that commercial leaders are feeling the effects, with a staggering 69% of CEOs seeing lower seller productivity. For sales leaders seeking to escalate growth projections in 2024, it’s time to rethink how sales enablement should be done.
Playbooks and Structures Aren’t Keeping Pace
The traditional methods of sales enablement worked because they provided sellers with a blueprint for success: prescribed criteria and frameworks to help sellers create a straightforward buyer’s journey. Furthermore, these frameworks are useful even to sellers with little experience.
So, what’s the issue? While intuitive, these playbooks and tools are struggling to evolve with the increasing demands of buyers. Sellers who follow prescribed steps may find themselves downplaying buyers’ legitimate concerns, while pre-made insights might overwhelm buyers and slow down decision-making.
Crucially, structured environments encourage sellers to follow guidelines without allowing them to tailor their approach, resulting in trust erosion and a worse buyer’s experience. Sellers in structured environments can still close deals, but for organizations looking to go further, a discretionary environment can provide much greater opportunities for success.
How Discretionary Environments Empower Sellers
When organizations provide sellers with more autonomy, leaders amplify their sellers’ unique ability to diagnose buyers’ needs and deliver greater value. Instead of driving buyers down fixed paths, sellers are now able to critically think about a buyer’s needs, then foster a sales approach that seeks to address their concerns.
Discretionary environments leverage the seller’s ability to deliver success. This shift in execution is a transformative one: sellers go from mere executors of instructions to linchpins for success. For sales leaders, this means that sellers are motivated to be more productive and proactive, ensuring that organizations are constantly anticipating and staying ahead of buyers’ concerns.
Simply put, sales leaders can give sellers the freedom to be productive.
Start Amplifying Seller Productivity
B2B buying is unlikely to become less complex, and commercial leaders should empower their sales talent to be more productive in increasingly challenging markets.
Take the first step by reading our newest whitepaper and learn how you can build an effective discretionary environment to drive greater value.
