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Buyer-seller-gap
Sami SuniMay 20203 min read

What is a buyer-seller gap.. and how to close it?

Lost focus and wasted time

Low-performing sales is a big and costly problem for any business. Typically B2B sales rep’s week includes just 14 hours of selling and interacting with prospects and customers and up to 26 hours of administrative work. Administrative work includes tasks such as finding the right content and creating a sales pitch for the next meeting. According to studies, salespeople spend hundreds of hours per year searching and gathering sales content. That’s all away from actual selling and off from the bottom line.

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Buyer's journey and high expectations

B2B-selling has changed fundamentally over the last decade. The main reasons for that are the following: the complexity of B2B solutions has increased, competition is more fierce, global, often from newly emerged markets. On top of that, buyers have almost infinite information resources available. All these have changed B2B buying processes and made buyers more demanding than ever.

Understanding the buyer’s journey

You’ve probably heard that up to 57% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a salesperson is contacted. The majority of the information that buyers previously got from the salesperson, is now from the web, industry events, peers, and influencers. At the same time competition has become tougher and often global. No wonder that it’s easy for buyers to get lost in the chaos.

Only 20% of reps meet buyer’s expectations

Be aware of the high expectations

So, although buyers do a lot on their own, over 90% are still willing to meet and interact with salespeople. Especially when they’re looking to buy something more complex or are still unsure what would be the best solution for them. Buyers expect value-adding insight from salespeople they’re willing to meet. However, only 20% of reps meet those expectations and a staggering 70% of buyers say that sellers don’t understand their business. So when you, the salesperson, have a chance to engage in a conversation with a prospect, make every interaction count and guide your prospect through the chaos.

customer-journey

Winning sales pitch

How could salespeople be better prepared to meet and exceed buyer’s expectations? This is where a good, visual sales presentation comes into the picture. The power of visual communication is strong. We retain 80% of the information we see, compared to just 20% of what we read and just 10% of what we hear! And according to Gartner, relevant information and content make buying easier and increases purchase probability by 2.8X. So make sure your salespeople have everything they need ready at their fingertips, and ready to be presented and shared with a buyer, anytime and anywhere.

Relevant information and content increases purchase probability by 2.8X

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Influence all key decision-makers

Sales reps rarely get to meet all decision-makers. According to Harward Business Review, on average there are 6.8 people involved in making a purchase decision. Therefore sales need lots of different types of content that they share throughout the whole buying journey. Content helps to add value at every interaction point, but also supports the prospect’s own internal sales process, influencing all decision-makers.

Sales Enablement is the answer

Put simply, the term sales enablement means providing salespeople content and tools to engage buyers more effectively throughout the entire buying process. Many businesses have already recognized this need. Today, sales enablement has become one of the top development priorities of sales organizations all around the world.

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Showell is a powerful sales enablement tool

Showell is a powerful sales platform that holds all sales collateral in one, central location and helps salespeople to find, present, and share the right content at the right time to influence all key decision-makers throughout the entire buying journey.

Showell helps to find, present and share the right content at the right time

Prepare and educate sales reps

With Showell, salespeople can prepare a customized presentation for the next meeting in minutes. That saves a lot of valuable time. Adding internal sales training content to Showell creates even more advantages. Having all internal sales training content in one place reduces the ramp-up time of new sales reps and enhances everyone’s selling capabilities. Showell scales sales excellence.

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