Is Your Company Ready For 2014?

As you head into 2014, be mindful of trends in sales and business development that can help your team to stand out from the competition. These 10 predictions could be the keys to achieving your goals in the coming year.

Here are my predictions for key ideas and trends that will shape sales and business development in 2014. Is your company ready for 2014?

1.  Evolution of Subject Matter Experts

Buyers can now get just about all of the information about your company, products, and services from your website. However, what clients lack is the subject matter expertise in the form of trends, best practices, or creative applications that determine whether or not there is a fit for the customer’s situation. Buyers value subject matter experts.

If you want to know whether or not you rise to this standard, ask yourself if your ideal clients would value the meeting from your team enough that they would happily pay for the session. If so, then you might already be there. If not, then you have a goal for 2014.

2.  Content Becomes Emperor

Last year, people said, “content is king.” In 2014, content will continue to be the core to building value and getting heard above the noise. Buyers (and Google) value the best educators, as Marcus Sheridan of TheSalesLion.com says.

Naïve companies feared sharing their best stuff on their websites. As initial investigations for solutions move to search engines, your ability to stand out from the crowd comes down to whether or not you are addressing the most important questions for your ideal customer. If you are stuck with your head in the sand, you might just overlook huge opportunities flying over your head.

3.  Continued Shift Toward Vertical vs. Geographic Focus

The shift from vertical to geographic focus tends to work in cycles. With the evolution and prevalence of video-based communication and collaborative technologies, geography becomes slightly less of a big deal. However, the increased value placed on subject matter expertise will shift the table in a big way in 2014 toward vertical markets. If you have not shifted to vertical or industry solution expertise, make the move soon or suffer the consequence.

4.  Collaborative Sourcing and Selling

Over the past 5 years, there was a trend of buyers beating up on weaker suppliers. While the short-term goal of the buyer was a reduction in costs, the unintended consequence was the destruction of many suppliers and companies who failed to identify their own deficiencies in negotiation and sales prowess until it was too late. Ultimately, buyers lost a portion of their supply chain. The more sophisticated buyers will seek sellers with whom they can work collaboratively to obtain the greatest value. Buyers realize that the cheapest price has little meaning if the vendor cannot deliver.

Collaborative selling will reward results and outcomes. Those vendors without differentiation and value will continue to get slaughtered.

5. The Shift Toward Project-Based Services Engagements

Buyers have discovered that paying by the hour creates a disincentive for innovation and efficiency. The longer it takes the vendor, the more they earn. However, for the client, the faster they get a solution, the better. The hourly-vendor who delivers the most efficiently makes the least money.

In 2014, the top performing professional services organizations will start shifting as much as 30% of their billing to project-based, or outcome-based pricing (with assumptions to protect themselves). Buyers want results, and they’ll pay for it. However, the savvy customer rarely wants to sign a blank check for hours of time without a defined outcome.

Project-based billing rewards sharp investors and takes some risk off the table for crafty buyers. If you stay within your area of expertise, it is a good trade-off.

6.  Sick of Waiting for the Economy – Build your own

Most economists say that the economy will continue to bump along in 2014. Innovative companies with a great story will start putting their capital reserves to work to build their own economy. The way the economy grows is when businesses grow. And, those businesses with creativity and value will get tired of waiting for the so-called “economy” and will build their own environment to thrive. This will drive accelerated growth in the latter half of 2014 to carry into a strong 2015.

7.  Hiring Trend for 2014

Recognize that there is a need for subject matter experts. Be on the lookout for businesses cross-training their subject matter experts on how to engage in the sales process. Companies who do hire sales professionals or sales managers will rely more on specialized recruiters to ensure their next hire is the right one. Companies realized that hiring people who were out of work does not tend to result in stellar results as those people were likely out of work for a reason.

There are great ways to find a gem without using a recruiter, but recruiters are still the best way to attract superstars from other companies.

8.  Simplified CRM Solutions

Companies need something beyond a spreadsheet (or napkin) to keep track of their business pursuits. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions emerged to maintain knowledge, automate forecasting, and improve communication.

However, over time, the CRM solutions have taken on a life of their own. The data entry requirements have become so overbearing that few organizations enforced compliance (mostly because the only people who filled out all of the fields are the worst performing reps).

Look for a shift in 2014 for companies to identify the top handful of pieces of information they need to understand if a deal is legitimate or not. They will ask reps to maintain fewer pieces of information, but will require compliance.

9.  Better Qualification for Efficient Pipelines

It used to be that if a company was trying to reach $5 million in revenue, it would often chase $8 to $10 million in opportunities. Today, companies often set a three to five-time multiplier. So, for $5 million, they pursue $15 million to $25 million in opportunities. Sharp organizations have started tracking the cost associated with pursuing unlikely deals.

Instead of chasing everything, companies will define specific criteria for what makes a good pursuit, and which ones should be dead on arrival. Deliberate selection maintains focus, and preserves resources for the proper pursuit of the opportunities that deserve the company’s attention.

Look for companies to qualify based on the relative impact and importance to the customer of solving the issue, rather than the desire of the company to sell something.

10.  Honesty Prevails

With so much hype and old-school tactics, buyers will reward sellers who identify their own limitations. Claiming you are an expert at everything will be hard to believe when the buyer can search to discover the truth. Humility and candor will be sought after skills in 2014. Sellers will realize that when they are honest about where they are not a great fit, the buyer gains confidence about everything else you’ve said.

Conclusion

2014 is a year for your business to step from the sidelines and thrive.  Stay informed and ahead of the trends impacting your industry to ensure you are a leader in your space.  I plan to monitor these trends closely in 2014 and will share discoveries of these trends in my upcoming articles.

You can sign up to receive my weekly article at GrowMyRevenue.com or Follow on me Twitter @GrowMyRevenue

Your Turn

What trend do you think should make the List for 2014?

1864 views