This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Maria Boulden, Vice President and Executive Partner at Gartner. A majority of people now want a digital and seller-free experience during their buying process. This does not mean that sellers are obsolete, rather it indicates that sellers must adapt and meet buyers where they are to sell successfully. This could mean providing information to buyers and knowing the points when buyers would actually prefer to engage a human. Maria emphasizes buyers' behavior of researching on their own to reach a decision and leading them to a decision rather than selling to them.

HIGHLIGHTS

A trend of preferring no engagement with sellers in a buying process
Know how your targets want to buy
Forecasting with machine learning and using verifiers
Offer freemium and demos that don’t involve phone calls

QUOTES

06:46 Maria: "The primary trend I would point to is well before the pandemic, we saw massive increases in online learning. Well before the pandemic, we saw a growing preference for a rep-free sale. And well before the pandemic, we saw the beginning of a disconnect between how buyers wanted to buy and how sellers were stuck selling to the point where a buyer would disproportionately reward a better customer experience even if the product or service was inferior."

18:25 Maria: "The ones who think they've seen it before, the ones who think it's just going to snap right back to the way it used to be, and all I have to do is have one good dinner or just put me in front of the customer again, they're shutting down to the changes that the world has already made."

26:57 Maria: "The most successful sales lead to what you're trying to sell instead of leading with what you're trying to sell. People love to buy. They hate to be sold."

You can connect with Maria in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-boulden-8a778b11/
Website: https://www.gartner.com/en

More about Nigel Green

Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership: https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/
Check out my book: www.therevenueharvest.com
Do you want a best-in-class sales team? In this book, you learn how seven timeless principles can 2-3X your revenue and turn your sales team into a sales machine.
Website: www.NigelGreen.co

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.