What do we mean by the ‘future of sales’ and what exactly does it look like?  Last Tuesday I attended the first SalesTribe meet up in Sydney, hosted at HubSpot (also known as SydSpot) As you may have guessed from the title of this article, it was all about “The Future of Sales”.

I’ve been connected with the visionaries at SalesTribe for almost a year now and I am impressed with what they are doing to educate and prepare sales professionals for the future. Why? Let’s rewind 11 years ago. I was a traditional marketer and attended a marketing conference in Boston, which was really all about “The Future of Marketing”. It centered on how technology was changing the way people engaged and made purchasing decisions, and it firmly suggested marketers had to change too. The company I was working for at the time used traditional marketing methods that I knew were not sustainable or effective. So, I began my quest to better understand this “new” marketing methodology called ‘Inbound Marketing’ (I don’t think I really need to elaborate here - my business name is The Inbound Marketing Company after all!). The inbound marketing methodology is transforming the way marketing is done. Today, technology, the internet and social media have changed the power of influence from the salesperson to the buyer. As a passionate marketing professional, I am extremely interested in where sales is heading and what companies need to do to stay relevant (or inevitably get left behind).

Below are a few key points I learned from the SalesTribe event. However, what I was really impressed with was the way they delivered their message SalesTribe actually walk the talk.  It was positioned as a “meetup” and that is exactly what it was. It wasn’t your typical presentation with a high-pressure sales pitch at the end. This was first and foremost a community event where the SalesTribe team mixed and mingled with the attendees until the presentation began. Then during the presentation the SalesTribe founder and CEO Graham Hawkins invited people to ask questions and to speak up if they didn’t agree with what he was saying.   It was truly an educational event that brought a community of like-minded sales professionals together. 

There were numerous great takeaways from the event but here are my top 10: 

1. Buyers expect salespeople to know them.
2. Personalise everything to the buyer’s context.
3. Teach your buyers something.
4. Anticipate their future needs.
5. Always be a salesperson who can be resourceful and helpful.
6. Add value through content.
7. Provide a WOW moment at each touch point.
8. Understand their needs, pain points and challenges.
9. Don’t be afraid to recommend a competitor as a way to develop trust (it shows you are helpful and understand what they need).
10. It’s not about product & pricing, it’s about adding value. 

Handy tip: If you Increase personalisation, you decrease objections.

So if you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to join the SalesTribe Community. Hopefully we’ll get to connect at the next meet up.