7 Sales Trends in 2010 (Requires 43 seconds to read)

Sale Leaders on 2010 Sales Trends (art by Christophe Vorlet)

At the end of last year, we conducted an informal poll with sales leaders in our network on what selling trends we can expect to see in 2010. Here is what they had to say:

1. Competition – Expect fierce competition as companies are still struggling with cash flow. Your team will have to fight harder than ever for each win.
2. Pricing – Buyers may be loosening up and moving forward on stalled purchases, but new benchmarks have been set in terms of pricing. You will have to more creative than ever to get your target margin and terms.
3. Economy – There was split consensus on which direction the economy will go with half expecting a recovery and half forecasting a double dip, while no one would bet the house either way. Staying nimble makes sense.
4. Evolution of Buying – Sales has been changing for several years with buyers having unprecedented access to information on the Internet. Now customers are educating themselves on blogs, social networks, online forums and communities before speaking to your reps and popular marketing channels such as email are becoming less effective. Successful companies will need to invest in new ways to stay relevant and in front of the target customers.
5. Hiring – Most sales managers expressed that their hiring results needed to improve in order to meet increasingly challenging goals. General consensus is to add resources and structure to the hiring effort to find more reliable performers.
6. Process – With increasingly sophisticated buyers all sales managers expected to have at least rudimentary selling processes and guides to move their selling from art to science. In several cases, formal selling methodologies are being rolled out across the team.
7. Sales 2.0 – In order to better leverage marketing investments and lead generation programs, we can expect companies to increase cooperation between the marketing and sales functions, at least in defining target customers and collaborating to capture, qualify and close new leads.

We expect to be busy helping our customers meet these new challenges with top performing sales teams and leaders. It will be an exciting year.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in these similar posts:

1. 10 Hot Points for 2010 Sales Goals (Requires 35 seconds to read)
2. The Best Management Books – Revised (Requires 30 seconds to read)
3. How are you leveraging Sales 2.0 in your sales strategy?
4. Beat the Dog Days of Summer (Requires 33 seconds to read)
5. Top Lies that Marketing Tells Sales