In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, automation and AI have brought about significant transformations across industries. Nowhere is this more apparent than in B2B sales. With advanced technologies such as machine learning and automated tools, sales teams can leverage data analysis, streamline lead generation, optimize strategies, and personalize customer experiences. However, despite these advancements, sales performance continues to stagnate, leaving companies to grapple with frustrated customers, missed quotas, and high levels of burnout and attrition among sales reps. It has become clear that a change is necessary to fully realize the benefits of technology investments and unlock the true potential of human capabilities.
Intrinsic sales capabilities that go beyond Automation to drive revenue growth
While AI undoubtedly offers numerous advantages, it represents only part of the equation when it comes to sales performance. To meet the needs of modern customers, organizations must find ways to empower their sales team’s intrinsic capabilities – to go beyond automation. These capabilities include empathy, creativity, critical thinking, complex problem-solving, and the ability to navigate ambiguity in complex customer buying scenarios. Building relationships, understanding customer needs, and tailoring value propositions are at the core of B2B sales, and these are areas where human skills, intuition, and emotional intelligence excel, setting humans apart from AI. When these capabilities are nurtured and encouraged, they bring meaning, joy, and motivation to work, accelerating performance and driving long-term revenue growth.
A 6-Step Framework to unlock the full potential of sales teams
To unleash these powerful human capabilities, a new sales culture and operational model must be created. This involves striking a better balance between advanced technologies and empowering human capabilities to deliver meaningful value to customers. The following 6-step framework provides a roadmap for organizations seeking to unlock human skills, accelerate performance, and drive revenue growth:
Sales Culture: Build for Collective Performance
Step 1. Foster interdependent teams aligned to a shared definition of success: “We are truly successful together.”
Break down silos and drive collective performance by promoting awareness, responsibility, creativity, invention, and continuous learning. Place customer value and success at the center of the sales culture.
Step 2. Empower leaders to build high-performing cultures by playing a partnering and coaching role.
Encourage teams to self-govern, take ownership of their development and performance, and identify skill gaps. Personalized learning paths can then be created to help teams to realize their collective potential.
Operational Model: Build to Unlock Human Capabilities
Step 3. Create customer-value-centric (CVC) sales processes and inter-team workflows.
Define cross-functional team roles, responsibilities, and tasks. Establish shared goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) at each stage of the customer journey to ensure alignment and collaboration towards a common goal.
Step 4. Move beyond quantitative measures of success and develop a rich understanding of team collaboration and sales effectiveness.
Measure team engagement, collaboration, and value contributions at each stage of the customer journey. Create an environment that enables teams to research, analyze, and co-create tailored experiences that truly resonate with customers.
Tools & Technology: Balance AI-driven Automation with Human-Centric Approaches
Step 5. Implement a foundational layer of AI-enabled sales CRM and engagement tools to maximize seller efficiency and outreach.
Select tools with robust automation and generative AI capabilities to personalize customer interactions, freeing up sellers’ time for higher-value sales activities.
Step 6. Embrace collaboration-enabling tools that facilitate deep cross-functional teamwork.
Establish a unified view of the customer journey, providing teams with the necessary context and insights to make informed decisions and accelerate revenue growth. Analyze the practices of top-performing teams to replicate and scale high-performance sales behaviors across the organization.
As customers grow increasingly dissatisfied with outdated sales methods and sellers become disillusioned, leaders must embrace change. The emergence of advanced technologies presents a unique opportunity to reimagine the future of B2B sales. A future where there are symbiotic relationships between humans and technology, enabling people to explore their full potential and open up new possibilities to create, learn and grow. This is a future where lasting partnerships will be created, and customers will experience the full value of your people. The companies that make this transformation will be the organizations that create a new era of sustainable growth and success.
If you would like to learn more about how Animis can help unleash your sales team’s intrinsic capabilities, accelerating performance and driving revenue growth, please reach out to us for a chat. We are here to support you on this transformative journey.
