2024 Sales Trends to Stay Ahead

Rob  00:08

Welcome back, everybody to The Slow Pitch. And today we’re talking about 2024 sales trends so that you can stay ahead, there’s a lot going on in sales. But there are some things that stay the same. And some things that change. And we’re gonna get into that right now.

V/O  00:22

This is The Slow Pitch Podcast.

Rob  00:25

So I’m assuming the reason you’re listening to this episode is because you want to know what are the trends that you’re going to need to keep up with in 2024, so that you can get ahead of your competition? Or you’re wondering what has changed? I don’t know what I mean, is there really anything that’s changed? Well, kind of. So let’s kind of get into a little bit of what’s happening in the sales industry.

Rob  00:46

Let me just tell you right now, you’re not going to hear the word AI. Okay. That is part of what everybody will be doing and talking about. And yes, that is the thing, I get it, I don’t discount it. I’m just saying that’s not what this episode is about. If you’re hoping that you’re going to be able to punch something into chat GPT, or Bard or any of those, or Gemini or whatever they are…Copilot any of those. If you think that’s gonna solve your sales problem in 2024. I hate to tell you, you’re in for a rude awakening. It’s not, in my opinion. AI has a function in sales, but it’s not to make the sale. The trend is in the use of it, but not in the use to close sales.

Rob  01:24

If you rely on email, if you rely on AI, that’s the first trend you need to get away from. Because guess what? Computers don’t sell people sell in 2024. Okay, so knowing that, let’s talk about some of the sales trends that I feel like are kind of happening right now and right in front of us.

Rob  01:42

Let me kind of start out with a little bit of a story to explain these trends. I tried to make my coffee at home. But every so often, I need to stop at Dunkin Donuts, they have an app that you can order ahead of time you show up and it’s running really nice. And most places that I go to if I ever go to what a Dunkin somewhere, I, you know, I walk in, grab my coffee, and I walk out no big deal. There is one particular Dunkin Donuts that I’ve gone to, and I don’t go there all the time. Like it’s not that I’m not there every day. It’s not like that, right? It’s not like you go to the bar every day or the restaurant every day or something like that every day. And they know you.

Rob  02:12

It’s I went there enough times for them to recognize me. And there’s one person in particular there, who when I had the app, I placed my order. There was one day that I walked in the believer not the front door was locked, and she was inside work. And there was a line around the building. She was inside working. And I found out that she was the only one there. Everybody else called in it was very early in the morning. And she said other people were coming but like she was the only one there. And she saw me at the door. The door was locked. She saw my order, had the order ready and proceeded to walk away from all the stuff she was doing.

Rob  02:48

She walked to the front door, which wasn’t far away with my coffee and unlock the door, handed it to me and said good morning, Rob. Sorry. were backed up. I’m the only one here I go. Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, I would have gone through the line like everybody else. Because no, it’s okay. No problem.

Rob  03:03

And I thought from that point forward, I thought, wow, that was really cool. Like she knew be my name. Obviously, it was in the app. But more importantly, she knew me by face by my name. Number two, she took care of me like she was like your, your regular enough that I know who you are. I’m gonna take care of you. Since that day, that happened a couple more times over the next couple of months, where I would go in every once in a while.

Rob  03:25

All of a sudden, she was like only one or two people there were there should have been more they were having a hiring problem. What I ended up doing is, is every time I did that, I was like, Oh man, I don’t mean to step in front of everybody, but she just like took care of me, right? It’s a weird feeling. What that left me with is I walk away thinking I’m important to that person and to that business, because they saw me recognize me and made me feel really important. Now, what does that have to do with sales trends of 2024?

Rob  03:51

That person, whether you like it or not, is a salesperson for Dunkin, right? Their job is to sell more and blah, blah, blah, right. But by making me feel the way that I did, that made a whole different change in the way that I viewed my coffee. And whenever I need to go coffee to get coffee, I will go to that location before I go to another location. That’s the power, if you will of good salespeople, but the power of good relationship building, which kind of what my first item is, if you will, in what I feel like is a good sales trend that you need to be a part of what I’m seeing are the people that are successful are the ones that personalize and are customer focused.

Rob  04:29

In other words, and I’m really talking about the sales industry type of companies. But what I’m finding is is that the people that are out there that are doing the sales are doing the work and begin to do a sales function or do a function of sales, which is really customer service, they will have increased the demand for their service because of the way that they treat their people that they’re serving. So we’ve talked about this before in a previous episode, where we’re talking about building trust through your team.

Rob  04:57

That’s all part of that. And I think that There’s a new trend that is really starting to happen as I look around, those are the successful salespeople, I feel like that the personalization piece goes beyond simply just calling somebody by their name, or, you know, tailoring every piece of their service, it’s the whole piece of it, everybody is involved in the sale, meaning once it’s been delivered, there’s more than just Here you go, here’s your service, it’s continuing and continuing and continuing to offer value to that customer.

Rob  05:30

Right, that’s, that’s the difference that is addressing their unique needs and issues that they need to have taken care of through your service. This is really kind of a shift from the traditional way of look, this is our services are pride. Coffee is a is a commodity, there’s no question. There’s a coffee shop right next door, really good coffee, if I want to have a nice ambiance and a nice feel, I can go to that particular coffee place. It’s a privately owned, small, little place, great place.

Rob  05:56

But if I want my coffee, I want it fast, no one really good service, I go to Dunkin because I’m on my way, and it’s really easy. And they know who I am. And they take care of it. So it’s a commodity, but I go there because of the service that I get.

V/O  06:10

Do you have a question about sales call or text your question at 6087028? Slow? That’s 608-708-7569. Or you can email them to questions at the slow pitch.com. Now, back to the show.

Rob  06:30

Another trend that I see that has to do, essentially, with that customer focus, are those salespeople that approach their sale or approach their customers without using the traditional sales approaches, but also with a desire to form a deep understanding of what the customer needs are, and also what their pains are. So it’s understanding the customer needs. Okay, that’s great. That’s easy.

Rob  06:55

It’s understanding the pain and how does that affect them? And where what does that affect their bottom line? Where do they want to go? If they fix this? What are they going to do with that cash now that they’ve fixed that solving that problem that is a financial leak to them? Right? It’s a it’s a decrease in their cash flow. Now you’ve got some extra cash, what do they want to do with it? Where are they going to bring their business?

Rob  07:17

Those salespeople that understand that and go, Hey, I’m going to help you get there create a lot more value for that customer just by doing that, right, by understanding what they need. And they understand that because they have enough experience by going through the research and understanding what those customers need, kind of using the data that’s there and getting the feedback from their customers, understanding the marketplace, all of those things fit together.

Rob  07:43

But really, it’s about listening. It’s about listening, understanding and putting themselves into the customer’s shoes into their role, and understanding how things affect them personally, those salespeople that are highly involved in understanding what that company what that person needs to solve their problem and why that’s important, where where it leads to them personally makes a big difference.

Rob  08:08

And those are the salespeople that are become very successful. It’s not about going through the exercise so that you can say this is the solution. And that’s going to be the it’s going to be really about understanding it and going, Oh, that’s interesting. So it sounds like what we do might be able to help you Does that sound right to you, and let them and see that and understand how these things fit together.

Rob  08:28

That is a good salesperson, essentially, what happens is, is that that new customer, that client is going to kind of co-create or work with the salesperson to create the solution for the customer. When they do that they become the number one they have buy in number two, they this is it becomes very, very personalized to that person. And layer on top of that they’re there they’ve created this genuine relationship.

Rob  08:54

And by tailoring their solution by working through that together, they just created a very authentic and essentially a long lasting relationship. It’s trust, it’s mutual respect, mutual understanding, it’s honestly it’s the salespeople that go beyond the initial sale and continue to work towards solving problems for that, that client or customer. That’s when it makes a difference. What that does is it creates customer loyalty.

Rob  09:19

These people become your biggest fans because you’ve done all these things for them. And how can they not have somebody else know about this, they have to tell other people, they’ll write your reviews, they’ll tell other customers or other clients or other people that they work with or other business partners. They’ll tell as many people as they can, because of this great service. What they’ve done is work through the pain work through the challenges, understanding what the customer needs or client needs. And then finding those solutions together. Right.

Rob  09:49

And they do that all the way through the sales process and afterwards and really what you end up happening so the other piece of this is that I feel like is a good trend that should be happening it is happening a little Bear is those salespeople that are involved in finding the data and making decisions based on the data that’s there, along with some analytics makes a big difference. So some of the data isn’t always hard data. Some of the data can be simply soft data, which is like, Hey, you had a meeting here. And let me give you an example.

Rob  10:22

I was at a meeting with a my team. And we were talking about how we were going to approach this one problem we were working through just helping them. And in that meeting, what we ended up finding out was is they had three or four things that were outside of what we can do to solve that they were having problems with, right, so we couldn’t solve their problem, but they had some issues that they were having conversations with themselves about, yeah, we can’t get this message out, we can’t get that message out.

Rob  10:47

We’re having a hard time people under don’t understand what we do in this area. And it’s really having, we’re having a hard time clarifying and making that a part of our process and making that a part of our messaging. And I found that to be interesting. And that had nothing to do with what we were doing necessarily. But what it did do was helped me get some insights as to what they were doing. Those are the soft data points. Now, my team, when we go back together, what we end up doing is saying,

Rob  11:10

Okay, remember, that’s one of those issues that they’re having a problem with, how do we integrate what we’re doing and help them solve some of some of that piece of that problem. And suddenly, they’re looking at us as like, wow, they just went beyond what they said they were going to do. And it meant nothing.

Rob  11:26

For us. It wasn’t a cost for us, it wasn’t an extra, it was a little bit of extra knowledge of understanding of what they’re doing or what their problems were. And that helped us do what we needed to do an added layer on that was just, you know, it took us no extra time. That’s the difference. It’s, it’s taking into account the stuff that they need, and incorporating that into your solution so that they can look at you as an even bigger value than what you thought you were or what they thought they were. And finally, I think this goes without saying a little bit in the sense.

Rob  11:56

But one of the trends that I find that good, really good salespeople have is that they continuously look to learn and adapt a little bit. So what they do is they looking to look around and they and they listen to podcasts, they listen to different sales techniques that they hear. And they try to figure out, does that fit? Does that work? And what I will say is that these trends make a difference, that’s one of those things that are good.

Rob  12:21

But what I also see is that some trends are that is that really makes a good solid salesperson is not that they’re trying everything that’s new. There, what they’re doing is is they’re incorporating a new maybe component that they hadn’t thought about, or incorporating a new thing that they thought might that they’ve heard about. But testing it and measuring it. That’s the difference isn’t just going and doing it and they can’t figure out why it’s not working. It’s testing it, adding it in maybe adding a line or a cord incorporating a statement or incorporating a different question that they hadn’t thought of, and they test it.

Rob  12:53

And they say, well, that worked that didn’t work. How do I how do we expand that a little bit more? If it weren’t? How do I? How do I change it so that if it didn’t work? What do I need to do to make that work? Now? They look at that interaction with a client or a potential customer.

Rob  13:07

And they say, Okay, well, how do I adjust what I need to adjust so that I get what I what I need for information so that I can see if I’m actually a good fit or not those salespeople that continue to improve and continue to have a desire to learn more and expand their abilities by, you know, adapting and adjusting and learning and always continuously bringing in new information.

Rob  13:32

They’re the ones that will be successful through 2024. So what I want you to do now, I want you to think about what you just went through in this episode, how will you incorporate some of these you just heard into your day to day, and I want you to figure out how to incorporate that into your process? And how to how do you take what you’ve learned and apply it so that you start to gain insights into clients and customers needs that were outside of what you normally would ask, or past the sale stuff that’s already you’re already working with that client or you’ve been working with that client but you’re not a part of their day to day operations anymore.

Rob  14:07

Your team is how often do you reach back to that team? And ask those questions about let’s when your next meeting happens, can I sit in so I can learn a little bit more. And then all of a sudden things start to happen, where you’re going to start to find opportunities to ask more questions that then allow you to sell more, I want you to reflect on the stuff that we just talked about today. And in how you’re going to integrate that into your sales activities now.

Rob  14:32

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Rob  14:53

Thanks as always for listening today. If you’d like this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Follow us on Twitter. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at The Slow Pitch. We were mixed today as always by Gianni pavlakis And we were produced by high gravity studios, music credits and other notes are in the show notes section on the slow pitch.com And we’ll be back with another episode soon.